City of Dreams.
Copyright, Janice Law


One

	To Edward's left, the broad estuary of the river ran dark under a cloudy sky, and beneath the dike, the great marshes stretched to the sea, a thin white glitter on the southern horizon. The water looked nearer today, but Edward often had that apprehension, a professional apprehension as it were, quite suitable for his weekday role as Marsh-Keeper. He was one of a team that monitored the health and depth of the marshes, testing for the toxics still left below water, the slow leaks of gasoline and oil, the radiation, pesticides, and plastics, and searching out invasives like Phragmites australis that might damage the grasses, green-gold and lovely in the low light, that were the chief bulwark of the city.
	Sure, the dike was impressive, a cyclopean stone and cement barrier that surrounded the small, dense city, a wall so high that shipping crates had to be hoisted from the river by huge cranes. The walls were maintained by the Dike-Watchers, proud in their gray uniforms and black capes and caps, but in Edward's opinion, both the dikes and their watchers were more for show than substance.  A dike alone, no matter how high, could not tame the sea, only a marsh could do that, soaking up storm surges, breaking the waves, slowing the fatal rush of heavy, sandy water. His parents had stories of the last Rising, and though they'd been just children they remembered the brown waves of salt water pouring over the old dikes to drown the lower floors of Hartford and submerge the southern suburbs. Bodies had floated down river for weeks, and from the taller buildings of the city the survivors had looked south at the sinking roofs of ruined towns.
That was when Edward's specialty, marsh restoration, began. Now from the rebuilt, taller dike, he looked toward the sea, rising, of course, rising, but contained, sopped up and tranquilized by the thick mesh of grasses. The sea remained on the horizon for the moment, and Hartford, with its massive dike, its unique, raised architecture, and complex drainage system, held the river front, the lifeline of the cities on high ground to the west.
It amazed Edward that in the old days marshes were the enemy, to be drained, channeled, filled. Ancient history was full of horrors and follies, few worse, in Edward's opinion, than the destruction of what would be the city's salvation. Of course, if the records were correct _ and Edward had no doubt they were, having traveled to the shore in his work, having seen the ruins, and having, as part of his professional responsibilities, the monitoring of the wreckage left behind _ former generations lived hard by the sea. By choice. Amazing. Now only the poorest and most eccentric ventured to set up shacks on the edge of the marshes, and if the Surferklubs traveled down river when the waves were up, those sane & capable, as the phrase went, preferred to be out of sight of the ocean.
Edward thought that was why the Bulwark CafŽ did not do quite the business its charming garden and excellent locally grown coffee and chocolate would seem to deserve: it had a sea view. One of his friends, admittedly of a morbid disposition, claimed he could see the dead from the walls. Well, thought Edward, if you went back far enough in any direction, you'd see the dead, dinosaurs or men or forest buffalo or conifers or maple trees. He was a naturalist and the rise and decline of species was an irremediable, if gloomy, fact of existence. 
To clinch the point, the Great Risings were within living, if rapidly extinguishing, memory. A few ancients still spoke of Long Island and the Thimbles and the Great Evacuation of New York, and boaters had to navigate carefully around the sunken towers of Manhattan. All before Edward's time. Long before. He was of the so-called Aqua Generation, the first really adapted to the new conditions represented by the dikes and the marshes. He liked the soft, watery marsh light, the subdued hum of the massive tide turbines that fed the local grid, the sound of geese overhead.
So it puzzled him that lately he had felt a touch of Melankol. The epidemiologists were warning that the winter might be a bad one and blamed the outbreak on the grey marsh light. Edward, indignant, thought some slow developing mosquito-borne ailment or a new parasite was more likely; the marshes were, admittedly, a nursery for such things. He and all the Marsh-Keepers took elaborate precautions and every known prophylactic before they waded into those dangerous and protective waters.
Edward set down his cup, opened his Komunikator for the day's headlines, and scrolled to the Healthbits. It was a characteristic of the Aqua Generation that they had an obsessive interest in their own well-being, a trait sympathetic commentators traced to the epidemics of the last Rising, and critics, to the selfishness of pampered survivors. Edward being in the oldest cohort of the Aquas, came down somewhere in between, but he never missed the day's Healthbit. Today, amidst the usual Melankol reports, he spotted another Absence: young female, 23, black hair, light complexion, brown eyes, 5'4", slight build. No surprise there! Though the Fashbits touted the full figure, Edward hadn't seen a plump, never mind a fat, woman in years. He had a dim remembrance of Auntie Liz, a friend of his parents, a large, bosomy presence with a purse full of candies, his belle ideal really, but amplitude had gone with the last Rising. Rice, fish, and greens were not exactly an amplitude diet, though thanks to the Fish-Keepers, who managed the weirs and ladders that took salmon and shad safely past the turbines, the city ate far better than the hinterlands. There was that.
Another Absence with its own mysterious listing. Runaways were simply Runaways, while if a crime were suspected, the category was Disappearance; the latter would be entered in Crimebits and impinge directly on Edward's life, since malefactors rarely bothered to transport incriminating evidence to higher ground. Disappearances meant searching the marshes and dragging the river. Edward couldn't count the number of times he'd had to take Solar 8 out with SafetyMen on board, grappling hooks in hand. Disappearances were not Edward's favorite thing by any means, but Absences were a source of considerable interest.
What was her name again? Diorina Ashansa. A pretty name and a flick of another button brought up a reasonably pretty face, nice because, though it was hardly fair and evidence, as Kara would say, of "serious Retro," an Absence without a pretty face lost some of its intrigue for him. Diorina Ashansa, a worker at Turbine Maintenance Level 2, had become Absent walking home along the Raised Road around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.
That was interesting right there. Just as the marsh was the final resting place of Disappearances, the Raised Road seemed to have cornered the market in Absences. Three days ago: Light winds from the west, marsh water temperature 65 degrees, fair after a midday shower. Edward had been working on the ancient Hog Creek waterway. He thought for a minute, trying to bring up just where he had been at 4:30 p.m., and decided that he had been docking a small SolarBeaver. He remembered the dark water by the pilings and a late blooming water lily.
But Diorina Ashansa had been in the geographic and historic heart of the city, walking on the Raised Road, a modern construction that traced the line of an ancient thoroughfare. Some city historians dated the track back to the InterState because pylons had been found during excavations for the new, solid dike beneath the Raised Road. And although general opinion held that none of the Infra had survived the First Great Rising, Edward found those ruins suggestive. For him, as for so many others, the archeology of the city held an irresistible fascination, even though everyone knew Historicism was a key predicator of Melankol. Especially in the winter, Edward's Komunikator carried daily warnings about Pastolgia and all the other historically based ailments. 
He ordered another coffee, dropped in a couple of chunks of the dark, bitter chocolate, and stirred in a good spoonful of sugar. He had in his Komunikator a list of the most recent Absences, five in all over the last month. There was no pattern of age or sex or occupation or even Family Residence PreRising, a key indicator of so many other diseases. Despite the best epidemiological analysis, Absences appeared  random and mysterious. 
It was possible, of course, that some criminal might replicate Absence, might strike at random and make the tremendous effort to conceal the crime by leaving the city, avoiding the marshes, seeking burial for his victims on high ground. There was precedent. Mythbits were full of such stories, and the popularity JackRip and HanBal put the greater criminals of bomb, plane, gas, and artillery in the shade. It was possible that not mystery but nefarious humanity lay behind the Absences, though, on balance, Edward thought that unlikely. Hartford was CC, a ClosedCity, thanks to its proximity to the river, the marshes, and the sea. Sixty percent of the population was employed like Diorina Ashansa in some form of public works or maintenance, and the rest comprised their families and children or petty entrepreneurs like the owner of the Bulwark CafŽ. Most of them were only one or two contacts away from any other adult in the city, and it was this mix of precarious hydrology and communal knowledge that gave the town its peculiar character and made any long running criminality difficult to conceal. 
Epidemiologists had argued for years whether the crowded intimacy of life along the river counteracted the disadvantages of social and economic isolation. No doubt after the great disruptions of the Risings, friends and family had taken on immense significance, but Edward couldn't help noticing the popularity of jobs on the marshes. Any opening brought a flood of applicants, people eager to work six, seven, eight hours out on the lonely waters, and there were waiting lists for the solitary duty of patrolling the dikes. Even Diorina Ashansa had been in turbine maintenance _ not a lot of opportunity for chat, there.
He cranked the Komunikator battery and scrolled down the Absence list. He could go back several months if he wanted: male, 47, female, 45, female 16, male, 23, and so on. At the top of the list, the Komunikator posted the long-standing offer of a substantial prize, including a trip to the western Highlands for the person who solved the mystery of the Absences. Edward was definitely up for that, though it seemed to him that the Absences, however unsettling, were less astonishing in every way than the Returns.
He sipped his coffee, adding another few chunks of chocolate absent-mindedly to the hot liquid. Beyond the dike, the marsh was taking on the first flush of pink; Kara would be expecting him, and Edward was uncomfortably aware that he had shot the afternoon drinking coffee at the Bulwark instead of spending it with her. He might have invited her out to the cafŽ, although she would probably have refused or, more likely, made excuses, but in that case he wouldn't need to feel guilty. A year ago, even six months ago, they'd have been here together, laughing about some trifle or making future plans; he remembered her laugh, low and free, a joyous sound. She would have recounted stories about the more interesting of her charges _ the fours and fives whose parents worked in the turbine plant_ while he described his latest adventures on the marsh. On a sunny day like this, he might have taken out a canoe, a perk of his job, and paddled with her along the waterways to watch the herons and ducks. Kara, who even then had regarded such outings with a mix of pleasure and unease, would have teased that he was a true Aqua.
Edward tipped his head back and saw the fast moving clouds overhead. That's how swiftly things had changed. Now Kara would definitely not visit the Bulwark CafŽ. She wouldn't even venture to his apartment, which, though in layout almost exactly like hers, faced the marshes instead of the Raised Road. Her excuse was to joke about his housekeeping, though Edward was reasonably tidy as most people were, given their diminutive quarters. The standard new apartment, and most were no more than a generation old, consisted of a small front room with two large windows, a windowless back room equipped with a light shaft from the sun catcher  dome; a kitchen at the front with burner, cooler, water, and a small window; sanitary in back. Polished cement floors, wall colors in your choice, bed, storage, and appliances built in, the whole as waterproof as possible, understandable when even Highland apartments were built to the same specs. So it wasn't his apartment that troubled her: it was the view of the marsh with the distant line of the sea, the fogs, the emptiness. It was the first, faint sign of Melankol, though neither one was brave enough to whisper the word.
Instead, Kara waxed rhapsodic about her own apartment, which was rather pretty. In fits of Pastolgia, she and Edward sometimes enjoyed prints from early shelter books, amazed at the exuberant consumption of space and material, the variety of cushions, drapes, couches, floors, fittings, tables, chairs, china, paintings, entertainment devices, all gone with the First Great Rising. Now, by both taste and necessity, austerity was the aesthetic, and even the rich and competitive had to be content with modest enhancements. Though her budget was tight, Kara was more ambitious than most. She had recreated an elaborate wallpaper decoration with paint: an arabesque of vines and leaves in soft greens and browns like a forest glade or an overgrown garden. Edward found it impressive if a trifle claustrophobic, especially after she began work on the ceiling, closing the room in a green arbor of vines and branches that seemed set to spread into the bedroom. 
On a clear evening like tonight, you could stand at Kara's window with the greenish light of the apartment around you and look toward the towers of the Highlands and the palms and live oaks green on the parkland, and the shrubs and grasses softening the roof gardens. "You'd hardly know we were so near the water," Kara had said one day. "Would you? You'd hardly know."
Which was bizarre when he'd been still in his MarshKeeper's uniform; when his marsh boots sat on her doorstep. But their love had been quick and ardent then, and he'd come straight from work. When he turned to her, Edward had seen the anxiety in her face, the strain; perhaps he'd known then. It was surprising sometimes how much one can sense about other people and how much of that one can ignore. "You're a clever girl," he teased and put his arms around her. No one wanted to deal with Melankol, no one wanted to think about it.
He wondered now if all that obsessive painting, those trips through the RecyleBazaar for antique decorative items, the sewing of quilts and embroidering of pillows had been her means of defense. Maybe so, and Edward felt a little guilty for letting shopping and the smell of paint get on his nerves. He should go back. Though it wasn't strictly within his license, Carl would sell him some chocolate; he'd take back a bag and they'd make drinks and sit in front of her antique coffee table, a genuine rarity, although it was really too low for eating and no more convenient for coffee than the usual trays. 
She had been thrilled to find it, nonetheless. That was in a happier time, a weekend when they'd gone to the crowded bazaar with some friends. They walked past the usual clutter of old clothes, old shoes, kitchenware, and antiques of dubious quality. There was modest craft work made with amazing ingenuity from recovered materials, and because the wealthy liked to cover their cement floors with wood in imitation of the old construction, salvaged timber newly sawn. This was courtesy of the Resurrectors, a shadowy fraternity who trawled ruins in flat-bottomed barges and brought up salvage with divers or grapplers. The really successful outfits might have one of the rare compressors and do deep water or specialize in apartment towers for luxury goods like jewelry, sculpture, and porcelain, but most were shore rats. In dry summers, Edward often met them returning along the beach or prospecting in rough weather at the edge of the marshes. They did not have the best reputation. 
He remembered Kara radiant in the early sunshine, waving to her girl friends, stopping to chat with parents and bending down to share secrets with the children. She was full of fun, joking with Baba from the Marsh Keeper's office, and thanking Jonas, Edward's partner on the Solar 8, for some flowers he'd sent for her schoolroom. Walking in the sunshine, admiring the way her chestnut hair caught fire in the sudden light between the dark shops, Edward had thought how lucky he was to have her, how easy and pleasant life was.
"Oh, look at this." A vintage textile with huge leaves and blossoms. 
"Oak leaves," said Edward and felt a pang. You had to go nearly eight hundred miles north to find oaks _ and tulips! Now a winter specialty and fabulously expensive. 
She draped the cloth over her shoulders; the fabric was soft and pretty, but, as with so much in the bazaar, there was still the faintest scent of mildew, and he shook his head.
They walked on, hand in hand, past old bird cages _ one of Baba's enthusiasms: they spotted her dickering with the salesman for an oval brass contraption complete with a fake bird _ and strange, rusted electronic devices, use unknown, and automobile parts, very big with collectors and the FoundJunk artists, and salvaged tiles in baskets. Special locked cases held cheaper jewelry and little chunks of gold. The really good stuff was in the Tresor, the Bank & Valuables building, visited by appointment only. The usual food vendors hawked grilled river fish on sticks, chocolate of all sorts, coffees, vegetable stews, rice cakes with fruit, rice donuts with cocoa, flavored waters, and herb teas. Because all CCs had a special entertainment dispensation, they found singers and dancers at every corner, clowns for the children, and flutists, fiddlers, trumpeters, and guitar players busy on little stages set between the pylons. As they walked along the aisles that threaded the bazaar, the music followed them, sweet and omnipresent, one song breaking off and another taking its place, with underneath, a patter of drum and xylophone percussion that reminded Edward of rain or the sound of water sloshing in the marsh.
Overhead, red and yellow awnings broke the sun, and big white gulls circled, watchful for any scrap of food. Edward and Kara were right at the edge of the bazaar, almost at the wide steps that led down to the Tide Turbine Works, when she spotted a new shop with antique furniture. Edward was unenthusiastic about such stuff, which, with its watery and disastrous provenance, brought on twinges of Historror that he did not wish to encourage.
But Kara, whose family had taken terrible losses in the last Rising, was enchanted. Edward wondered if it was because her family had been Marshedout with absolutely nothing left, that she was so  taken with these dubious relics. She couldn't get enough of antique shops, and she pressed through the crowd toward the new one, a cement cubicle like all the others, but outfitted, behind the regulation flood glass with a clear antique shop window in a wooden frame. Inside, she exclaimed over an upholstered chair that Edward thought must be deeply unsanitary; a ladder in a weird greenish hue, still spangled with blobs of multicolored paint; a wooden chest, reeking of mildew. All were either impractical or priced beyond their means, but a low oval table, small for its type, dainty enough for even Kara's apartment, was sitting to one side. "Oh, it's perfect," she said. 
There was damage, of course: a loose frame, badly repaired veneer, and worn legs. No matter; these flaws simply brought it into her price range, and Edward gallantly carried it back under his arm, though he disliked the old, damp smell that impregnated the wood. Kara was in high spirits, humming along with some of the songs. Back in the apartment, she made herb tea and a dish of fried smelts with lemon and bread-crumbs, before they went to bed and joy rose out of tangled sheets and entwined limbs. Edward remembered half dozing later, listening to the sounds of water moving through the pipes and watching the round disk from the light tube travel the walls like some lesser sun. 
He thought now that was the last day they were happy together, the last day before unmistakable signs of Melankol began to manifest themselves, the last day before Kara began to avoid going out, to neglect her friends, to complain about the crowds and noise in the bazaar.
"The music is nice, though," Edward said one day. "That new group has found a saxophone. Wouldn't you like to hear one? A true antique."
Her smooth face tightened. She'd lost flesh and her cheekbones stood out, noticeable even with the tinted powder she'd started using. "All right," she said, "if you really want to go." And smiled, though he could see it was an effort.
"We can go by the turbine works, the same way you take to the school. That way we miss most of the bazaar. It's gotten very crowded," he said, agreeing with her, trying to show that he was on her side, that he understood. But he didn't, he couldn't. That's what all Melankol sufferers said when they recovered, if they recovered; the rate was officially classified, but it was low. Edward knew that and also that in CCs the rate was worse than inland. 
Downstairs they found the street already hot. It was always a surprise to come out of the apartments, cooled by the ingenious hydrology that kept water moving around the city buildings, and feel the hot stone paving, the burning air. 
"I don't know," Kara said. "It's so hot."
"A saxophone," he said. "You know my grandfather had one. Actually had one."
"And did he play?" 
"I'm sure he did. He was in local politics, you know."
She nodded. It was commonly believed that all politicians played saxophones, though Edward could not remember the source of that bit of folk wisdom. "All right," she said, and took his arm. He could feel her trembling and she walked beside him without speaking. 
To fill up the silence, Edward talked of the latest sightings on the marsh. Georg was convinced he'd seen a flamingo- "that would be the furthest north ever" _ and that nutria were colonizing Hog Creek. Excited about the observations, which would be featured soon on the Komunikator, he was describing an area of the marsh new to him, when she cried, "Stop, I can't bear it. I can't stand another word about your damn marsh. It's all right for you," her voice rising, loud even with the clatter of the street, "it's all right for you. You have water in your veins and not blood at all."
She burst into furious tears, and, in spite of his intentions for forbearance, they quarreled in the street. Later that night, he went to see her, and she apologized. "I don't know what happened," she said. "Normally, I like to hear about your work; you know that. And I am very fond of birds."
"Yes," agreed Edward. He knew that she fed the sparrows and pigeons against CC regulations.
"I just can't bear the water. I look off into the mist sometimes, and I think I'm losing myself. I think if something doesn't happen, my bones will dissolve. It makes me frantic."
Edward had noticed bandages on her legs and on her sides. There was no doubt this was Melankol, whose sufferers carried razors to 'bring themselves back' from the disease's terrifying dissolutions. That was the term: dissolution, to be rendered into the constituents, which in the case of homo sapiens, meant mostly water. "Perhaps you need to get away for a while. The Highlands are _"
"Too expensive," she said. "Even the Rail alone_" Her voice trailed off. She should, Edward thought, have some savings, but looking about the apartment with her elaborate decorations, the few nice antiques, the books, he understood that shopping and collecting had been her attempt to fend off the disease.
"You could take the TideRunner," he said. "That's cheap. You can go as far as Springfield _ or if you pick the right time, further." She didn't answer and he hurried on. "Solar from there, pricey, yes, but you could get all the way to Brattleboro. You'd see the mountains, you'd have high ground on both sides. It would be worth it. Even Canada would be worth it: maple trees, spruces, they still have spruces."
"I'd be on the river," she said. "I'd be on water all the way. Floating. I can't be on the river. I can't."
"All right," said Edward. "All right. Let me talk to the Tresor. We have our Marsh-Keepers Union there. I can maybe borrow enough for the rail if you have a little for a hostel. The Medi might certify you and then _"
"I'm not going near the Medi. If they even suspect I have Melankol _ yes, that's what you're thinking, isn't it? _ if they even suspect, I'll lose my Care License and then what will I do? I'll be all right," she said. "It is the rain, you know, the rain and the heat. Once fall comes _ after the storms, I mean _ then I'll be all right. Please," she said, and Edward, who loved her, did not press any further.
Now it was late fall, the nicest season, really. Below the Bulwark CafŽ, the grasses were turning from green to gold and their white and brown seed heads waved in the breeze. Kara hadn't been out in weeks except to go to her job. She managed the walk by a circuitous route along the Raised Road where she could avoid the river until she had to make a dash down the steps. Once inside the Child Room at the Works, she claimed that she was fine. So perhaps, it was only a mild case, perhaps she would be one of the lucky ones, perhaps, out of fear, he had misdiagnosed her. Perhaps.
Edward closed his Komunikator, exchanged a few last pleasantries with Carl, and slipped the bag of chocolate into his pocket. He'd take it back for Kara along with some new gossip about the Resurrectors, although that might or might not be wise. It was difficult, in a city that was surrounded by water, that was powered by water, cooled by water, fed by water; that lived on pumps and tides and water management, to find topics unrelated to their watery situation. Well, he thought as he started down the steps to the Circle Road, he would see how she was; he would maybe see something else on the way that they could talk about, that would bring her out of wherever Melankol had taken her today.
			





















Two

People were moving in two steady streams, many pushing handcarts or towing wheeled boxes full of groceries or tools or packages for delivery. Up on the Raised Road, a few electric government carts crept through the throng, while in the distance the elevated Rail hummed on the last run of the day. All the lower traffic was pedestrian; even bicycles could only be pushed within the dike: there was simply no room. For though the city chronicles recorded bitter struggles over means of conveyance, and the Museum of Lost Technologies still had examples of automobiles, trucks, diesel trains, and other rare vehicles, all controversy had been settled by the Second Rising. Besides, in a CC there was scant opportunity for travel; their work, their lives, their amusements must be here. Edward accepted that. He loved the contrast between his life on the marsh and in the city. If he was tired of congestion, of the smells and jostling and friction, the great expanse of grass and water beckoned, and if he felt the isolation of his work, he had only to step within the dike. No matter where he was in the streets, he could be sure of spotting someone who knew the latest.  Today he had barely started around the ring when Jonas waved to him. 
"Another Absence," he said, as they made their way toward the Raised Road past a cluster of Fishers with their poles, nets, and baskets, the smoke of their drying sheds filtering over the crowds. 
"Diorina Ashansa. I knew her," said Jonas. "Nice girl. She worked on maintenance. Tricky work; all that salt water plays up metal."
Edward nodded. "Had she been ill?" he asked.
"Not that I know of. Quiet person."
"You can't always tell with them," Edward said.
"Can you tell with anyone?" Jonas asked rhetorically, and Edward knew that he was thinking of Kara.
"She's seemed a little better lately," Edward said. He could hear a defensive note in his voice. They had a term for that: Melankol guilt.  "She manages work, you know."
"Oh, certainly, best thing," said Jonas quickly. "Be busy. Even for me. Days on the marsh with not enough to do _ you know how that is. There's some days _ an emptiness." His voice trailed off. Jonas had come from the Highlands, and he'd found the water, the marshes, the endless sky a hard adjustment. Edward was thinking that you had to be born with water in your veins, as the saying went, when a woman carrying a crate of lettuces bumped into him, forcing him to stumble. Instantly, a round of apologies, assurances, more apologies _ in a CC no one wanted to cause unnecessary offense, to make enemies, or to fan even the minor irritations of life. Your enemy today is your friend tomorrow: Edward had learned that in First School, and in a CC it had more validity than elsewhere.
When she was gone, he joked, "I think maybe this congestion is the cure for emptiness." 
"I don't know," said Jonas. "Empty or crowded. One or the other. Do two extremes make moderation? I don't know."
He sounded a trifle glum, and sensitive to his mood, Edward changed the subject. He'd heard something about a new Surferklub competition, and Jonas, an enthusiast, described the prospects of his favorites, a conversation that carried them to the Raised Road where Edward said good-bye and mounted the steps. Ahead of him, a woman was struggling with a small child and a large basket. Stuck by her white hair, he stopped to help her. There were very few old people in the CC, rather few over all. As Edward humped the basket the last dozen steps, he wondered how it would be when his Aqua Generation became old. The city had been engineered for survival, not convenience, and features like the Raised Road and the steep apartment stairs were for the young and fit. He supposed they'd be moved to the Highlands, to the Old Housing, to some stairless accommodation, though the rare elderly of the city clung to their apartments. His grandparents had stayed with his parents long after they were too feeble to manage, and Edward, despite his official capacity, had turned a blind eye.
An electric beeped behind him, and Edward stepped aside. From the edge of the road, he could see the pinks, yellows and blues of the close packed apartment buildings, none more than six stories high, each with solars, a cluster of light domes, a water purification tank, and a cooling tower rising from the grass or vines that insulated the roof. The red and yellow awnings of the bazaar cut a bright swath to the dark mass of the Tide Turbine Works, then there was the vast expanse of river, gleaming, tidal, stretching across to the beginnings of the Bolton Highground. In the sunlight, the bazaar, the domes, and the soft tones of the buildings made a pleasing contrast to the silver sheet of water. Edward felt his spirits rise. When he passed a flower seller with late swamp lilies, he bought a bunch for Kara. The weather was drying out; the heat, dwindling; she would begin to recover, he was sure she would.
Down the steps at Twain Street, named for an ancient boatman of dark and antic humor, very suitable for a watery city. Up the flights of stairs to her apartment, one, two, three, flowers and chocolate in hand. Tap on the brilliant orange door, humming under his breath one of the new, catchy tunes he'd heard along the road.
"Kara." He might have been nervous at the silence, but she'd be in the sanitary, washing her hair, or napping  in the back, or even, though Edward rather hoped she wasn't, busy painting more wall designs, more trees, more flowers around her bed.
"Kara!" Louder. Once he would have assumed she was off with Baba or visiting one of their other friends or picking up some groceries. And she still might be. With care, the route from her apartment to the fish, vegetable, and fruit stands could be managed without ascending the Raised Road, without seeing anything but the walls of the buildings, the sky, and the top of the protective dikes. She was out, and didn't that mean her recovery was under way? 
Once again, "Kara!" then Edward unlocked the door and stepped inside. No paint smell; no cooking, and none of the faint, flowery perfume she favored, either. But that meant nothing. She was out, shopping. Perhaps she'd felt well enough to venture to the bazaar; she was better; he'd told Jonas as much, himself. Still, Edward felt a wave of uneasiness like a sinister internal tide. He hurried into the back room, then the kitchen; hesitated just a instant at the sanitary, then pushed open the door: dark cement floor, shower tap, hand tap, the thick composting toilet. In spite of himself, he felt relief; he did not even want to admit to himself what he had feared, what he had, for  a treacherous moment, expected. Kara was fine. She was out. He'd hear her key in a minute, hear the click of the latch, her feet resonant on the floor. She was all right.
Edward preserved that conviction long enough to put the lilies in water and to set out the chocolate in one of her pretty ceramic dishes. The front windows were full of pink evening light; the sun disk at the back, pale and dwindling. She should be back; she would have been expecting him; he always came on the weekend well before the meal. Edward scribbled a quick note on her  slate and went out again. First stop, the food stand, where the sharp-faced vegetable seller with the bad hip had not seen Kara. "Yeah, yeah, I know her," the woman said, as she limped back and forth, straightening her produce. Though her skin was as brown as Edward's, she affected pale blond hair that she wore in a single thin braid. "Comes twice a week, but not today."
"Not today," Edward repeated, and the woman shook her head. 
The fish vendor had the same story. He was small and stooped from working the nets, but his arms were thick with ropey muscles. "Red hair?" he asked, looking up at Edward from under the brim of his wide straw hat. "Real red hair?"
"Yes," said Edward eagerly.
"Buys her fish here regular, but I haven't seen her for days." 
Edward drew in his breath, though it meant nothing, just coincidence.
"I'm sorry," the man said in a kindly way. His eyes were very large and rather protuberant; Edward noticed one of them had the beginnings of a cataract and that both of them were sad, a bad sign. Though it was pure nonsense, fishermen were reputed to have InSight. All that time on the river, all that searching for fish, navigating in mists and fogs, detecting hidden shoals, how could they not know things, see things? 
Desperation rose like a swamp turtle and caught him unexpectedly. "Do you know anything?" he demanded, "Can you see her? She hasn't been well. I'm worried."
The man shook his head. "Not now," he said. "Can't see with the sun up. Come back in the moonlight. The moon governs water, and water governs life. I only see by moonlight."
Edward nodded, although he was already appalled. He was ScienceSide; he spent his time with tests and measures, yet in a single moment of anxiety he'd succumbed to the Super that had haunted the city since the Risings. "Where?" The voice wasn't his own; the idea was ridiculous and yet the question hung in the air.
"Quinnak and Dike. First floor. You come when the moon is full and I'll try." 
"Yes, yes, thank you. Though by then I'm sure she'll be back."
The fish man lowered his head so that his eyes were shadowed by the wide brim of his hat and gave a sad smile, as if he could indeed unfold the future. And what could that be, as the saying went, but more sorrow?
Don't think about it. Grief rose like mist; Pastolgia could turn toxic; there was no one without losses hidden deep in their bones. Kara might not have gone out at all; she might be visiting someone in the apartment building. Thinking how foolish he'd been to jump to the worst conclusions, Edward returned to the building and knocked on Rayli's door. After a moment the young engineer appeared, short, pale, nearsighted. He looked doubtful at Edward's question.
"She goes to school. I see her in every morning."
"Not weekends, not in the afternoon?"
"Not lately. Not today."
Edward thanked him and went up to the next floor. The Frys weren't in. Norton in the corner apartment said he'd slept late. Edward had reached Kara's floor again, before he got some news. Edythe, her nearest neighbor, told him she'd heard Kara's door. 
"I was surprised," she said. "She usually stops in to talk _ you know, just to say hello. But today I heard her feet on the stairs."
"What time?" asked Edward, his apprehension returning. 
"Couple hours ago. Maybe three o'clock. I'm not sure."
"But not early, though," said Edward, who was finding it hard to process the information. "Just recently."
"I noticed because she hasn't been going out much."
"No, no, that's right." Edward thanked her and hustled down the stairs again.  Kara must be with Baba or some other friend, and he pushed through the twilight crowds alert for the first sounds of music from the Circles. Yes, yes, he heard them: the soft taps announcing the evening's revelry. His heart jumped in anticipation of relief and reunion, as the sound led him on, under the Raised Road, past Hookr and Grass, down toward Front, where he saw faint lights in one of the big open halls created by the raised architecture. Most of these halls were devoted to shops or storage, but a few were for dancing, for music and drinks and meetings. The venues tended to shift on a regular basis as cargo or goods were moved in and out of the city; BatWing, a favorite of his circle, on Front today, might be reconstituted on Twain next month. 
Now he was close enough to identify the characteristic sounds of the 'Wing band, the proud possessors of a classic upright piano dubbed Mr. Jonah; the battered survivor of untold calamities, it was introduced at the start of every performance to tumultuous approval. The piano's strings were very much the worse for wear, and whatever was in its lyric past, the instrument was now strictly a percussion accompaniment. Ah, fiddle chiming in, cranked guitar whining in the background, all so familiar that Edward's heart lifted. He could forgive Kara even this terrible, soul-emptying anxiety, because she was well, really well, and dancing again in the Circle at the BatWing. He hurried through the gathering crowd to the weighted curtain of mosquito netting and ducked into the entrance. 
The dance was already started, two big circles, women for the inner, men for the outer. Touch hands with your partner, dance the first figure; Mr. Jonah upped the tempo, and the swaying women started counterclockwise, the men, clockwise, the whole concentric mass moving in time to the increasingly frantic fiddle and the piercing guitar. The light was so dim_ just a few pooled rations of Electric to power the red and yellow lanterns, and gleaming catchers reflecting the yellow disk of the waxing moon _ that it was almost impossible to identify anyone unless you were face to face. Edward cut into the outer circle between Neal, a short stocky man with a stiff brush of hair and a square jaw, who worked on the Rail, and tall, pale Pytr, who was the Solar boat mechanic for Edward's end of the marshes.
"Have you seen Kara?" he asked eagerly, still in the grip of his conviction that she was well, present, dancing.
"Tonight?" Neal shook his head.
"Not for weeks," said Pytr.
A great thump from Mr. Jonah _ and Edward's heart. Lines stopped. He was facing a dark, strong-featured woman with her hair in venusbraids. He bent forward politely and kissed her cheek. "Do you know Kara Wistley?" 
She shook her head.
 "Is she here tonight?" he asked. "Pass it on."
The woman returned his kiss and pranced away as the fiddle resumed, while next to him, Pytr and a lively green-eyed woman Edward vaguely recognized from the bazaar were still clutched in an embrace. A warning thump from Mr. Jonah. "Keep it moving!" shouted the guitarist. Pytr and the green-eyed woman were unrepentant.
"It's too early in the evening for that," yelled the fiddler, and to general laughter, the circles turned again. Kara had to be there. Had to be, though the noise, the crowd, even Mr. Jonah, generally beloved, would shred her nerves. But she was well, of course, she was, and Mr. Jonah would delight her. In the dim swirl of the hall, Edward thought he saw her a dozen times, and his head was so full of fears and wishes that Baba had leaned over and kissed his cheek and said, "So where's Kara?" before he recognized her.
"I thought you'd know. I knew I'd find you here. I thought she'd be_" Realizing that his hopes were folly, he broke off in consternation. Baba stepped out of her circle and took his hand.
In the deeper shadow of a support pier, they bought cups of bitter chocolate, and Edward added a rice and veg plate from the BatWing's rolling buffet. He'd had had nothing but coffee since breakfast and the combination of an empty stomach and anxiety was making him feel lightheaded. 
"You didn't really think she'd be here," said Baba, "when she hasn't been anywhere in weeks." Her pale face was small and triangular, like a pretty cat's, and her exasperation only increased Edward's unease.
"There was no note, nothing. She hadn't been to the fish stand, she hadn't bought vegetables. Have you seen her?"
"Friday. On her way back from the nursery. She was no different."
"No worse," Edward agreed. "No worse. She cooked dinner. We sang for a while." He had a fine tenor voice and Kara, a sweet, true alto. Since her illness, they'd often made their own music instead of venturing to the Circles.
"You'll have to Notify," said Baba.
"You know what they'll ask! I don't dare until I'm sure. Suppose I'm wrong? Suppose she's with a friend, maybe even one of the parents_ you know she's close with them. What about Liz or _ what's her name? Liz's friend, the deaf one?"
"Alexina. I don't know. They'll be at Dancing Otter, I'd guess. Do you know it?"
Edward shook his head, and Baba said she'd come with him.
He took her arm, grateful for the company. Except for the vicinity of the various Circles, the emptying streets were quite dark despite the moon, the various reflective catchers marking the curbs, and the solar powered building night-lights. Walking was for daylight. The crowds now were up on the roof gardens, where friends gathered to visit in mosquito tents that gleamed faintly with candles or an occasional pipe. Moonlight nights were greatly favored as an escape from the cramped apartments, and Edward and Baba heard convivial voices and the occasional snatch of song as they crossed the city. To their left, the Komunikator tower loomed against a stretch of pewter clouds, reminding Edward that he could find SafetyMen there. But it wouldn't come to that; it couldn't. 
On their way to the Otter, they checked several other, less familiar Circles, but though they found acquaintances, if not friends, in each, there was  no sign of Kara. Baba shook her head in discouragement and led the way down a narrow flight of steps. Unlike the other Circles, the Dancing Otter actually owned a permanent space, and Edward's heart sank when he saw that it was above some drying sheds. He could smell fish and water; he knew that unless Kara was 100%, and maybe more, there wasn't a hope she'd be there.
"Otter's got a wood floor," Baba said. "They come here, because Alexina can feel the vibrations. She can dance here."
Up stairs as steep as a ladder, the sound growing louder with every step, they emerged into an attic above the drying shed. The only light came from big sky windows in the roof, open tonight to let out some of the stifling air and to admit the moonlight that set the dancers' long shadows swirling up and down the floor and the walls. The band was not nearly as good as BatWing's but twice as loud, a thunderous can-based percussion setting the wood floor aquiver in a way Edward found momentarily disconcerting. Baba, who was a confident, rhythmic dancer, plunged into the inner circle, and he followed with the men. A few knew Kara, though fewer here than at BatWing, but no one had seen her, and when Baba finally fetched up Liz, she reported no contact with Kara for weeks. "Not since, you know_ she started to not feel well." Liz looked uncomfortable. Even in the dim light, Edward could tell that. Aqua's picked up on emotion in curious ways.
"Not her kind of place, anyway," Edward told Baba on the way out. 
"We had to check before you Notify." 
"Yes, of course." But he had no intention of Notifying, not yet. That was too serious a step, that was a concession to defeat. "I'll walk you back," he said, for the streets were growing darker as the night grew cloudy. That was often the way: the weather changed fast on the marshes and the abundance of water fed the clouds. By the time they reached Baba's building, located like his, near the Dike, they were relying as much on memory as sight to navigate. No matter. He thanked Baba, promised again, deceptively, to stop by the SafetyPoint near the Komunikator Tower, then made his way back to Kara's apartment. Going up the dim hallway, he again had himself half convinced she'd be there. Certainly he stopped and knocked and called to her, not wanting to startle her with the sound of the key in the lock.  
"Kara." An echo in the hall that he had not noticed in daylight. "Kara?"
Inside the apartment was untouched; Edward knew the moment the door opened that she was not there, that she had not been back, that everything was as he had left it. Nonetheless, he walked through the rooms, whispering her name to the silence. She really was gone. Exhausted by the emotions of the search, Edward lay down on her bed in the back room and, sometime in the small hours, fell asleep.
He woke at his usual time, troubled by gray light on the wall and the unaccustomed darkness in the front room; his own apartment, facing the marsh, caught the dawn light. Storm? Hurricane? He sat up, saw the pale floral bed cover, and realized his mistake. It had not been a bad dream; he was in Kara's apartment, and she had Disappeared or become Absent. At the moment, he didn't know which would be worse.
On the way to the marsh, Edward  stopped by his local SafetyPoint, a spare concrete blockhouse set, not on ground level like a Marsh-Keeper's, but constructed in the frame of the dike about half way up. He knew that he could not postpone making a report any longer without opening himself to a charge of Obstruction. It had to be done. Through the window, Edward spotted Harris on duty and was relieved. They'd been on the water many times together and just seeing his long, thin, humorous face put Edward in a hopeful mood. 
"Well, well," Harris called. "Early in the day for a visit."
"Late, rather, to make a report," said Edward, denying the seriousness, trying for a light touch. Now that he was actually in the building, now that it was about to become official, Kara's disappearance again seemed unreal. 
Instantly Harris's humorous expression vanished. "A late report?" he asked sharply.
Of course, this was his work, of course he would be all business, but with nerves newly exposed and all ajangle, Edward was taken aback. Harris was a friend, after all, the companion of grim days and nights with the grappling hooks. "It's probably nothing," he said, but Harris immediately produced the white Safety form along with a pen. "What or whom does this concern?" he asked. Official form; official voice.
"My Kara. Kara Wistley," Edward said and spelled out her name, though Harris danced at BatWing and had spent evenings in their roof tents. "She's been gone since sometime late Saturday night or Sunday during the day."
Harris looked at the time on his Komunikator. "Gone as long as thirty-six hours," he remarked. "In cases of Disappearance, the first few hours are vital."
"I know that," Edward said irritably. "I left her early Saturday evening. She'd been tired _ she has the fours and fives this season. I didn't know she was missing until Sunday afternoon. Late afternoon, and then I thought, I hoped," he corrected himself, "that she was out, visiting friends..."
"So you instituted a search?" Harris asked. "A personal search?" It was amazing, how even a person as familiar with Disappearance Protocol as Edward, could forget everything in a moment of panic. SafetyMen First had been the last campaign, Harris remembered, and what good it had done, he would like to know.
"I went to the Circles, met up with Baba _ know her? She works on solar cells. Blonde, small, quite pretty and full of fun. She's Kara's best friend."
"And?"
"Hadn't seen her. We tried the Otter _ looking for some other friends_ but nobody had seen her since Friday afternoon. Except me. I saw her Saturday."
Harris turned the paper around and wrote Edward's name in the blank, 'last seen by.' "What time was that on Saturday?"
"Nine p.m., maybe.  Or nine-thirty."
"And you went?"
"Back to my apartment. Sunday, I had some paperwork and then I walked along the river for a while and spent the afternoon at the Bulwark. Carl will know I was there."
"And the rest of the time?"
"Maybe Geno would know. He lives next to me. Or his wife. I think I saw Cela, I think I did." Edward tried to think who might have seen him along the river. It was difficult to pick a name out of the familiar flow of faces, out of the crowds. And would they remember him? Habit was the enemy of precision. "Then I got to her apartment and hit the Circles, as I told you." 
"Ending at the Otter."
"That's right. Waste of time. It's on the water. Had I known that, I wouldn't have bothered." 
 "If you were at the Otter, why didn't you stop by the Tower SafetyPoint on your way home?"
Harris' unmistakable, if reluctant, suspicion put Edward in a bind. If he'd really believed Disappearance, he should have reported immediately, and he'd better have a good reason why he hadn't. But the reason was possible Absence,  which suggested Melankol, which could cause Kara all manner of trouble. "I'd hoped she'd be home. People do go off sometimes, go out, forget to leave messages..."
Harris gave him a bright, concentrated look. If he had whiskers, he'd resemble a very thin nutria, Edward thought. He hadn't noticed that before, that inquisitive rodent look. "Did she often do that? Go out without leaving word."
"No," said Edward, hesitantly. "But lately..."
Harris leaned over the desk. "I'd heard she'd been unwell," he said in a friendly way.
Edward nodded. "But nothing too serious." He realized as he spoke that his tone was giving him away.
"Perhaps Pastolgia? Could we put Pastolgia?" Harris asked, telling Edward that the SafetyMan was on his side.
"I was worried," Edward said, "about her job."
"Pastolgia is not that serious, but it gives you a reason for doubt, for the delay. Otherwise, it's criminal."
Edward nodded and Harris said, "We'll undertake inquiries."  And waited.
It took Edward a moment to realize that their business was finished. "The marsh," he said. "You'll be on the marsh? You'll call me?"
Harris looked at him sadly. "You can't help. You must know that. A personal connection, last person to see? It can't be done."
"But that's nonsense! No one knows the marsh better than me, no one."
Harris shook his head. "And do not insist," he warned. "It might raise suspicions."
Edward gripped the edge of the desk and fought down anger. Then he turned abruptly and stumbled out down the steps to the roadway. His whole mind was filled with two ideas: Kara was really gone _ her sweet laugh, her red hair, her faint, flowery perfume, the soft curve of her breast; vital, bright, moody, lovely Kara; and then the other thought, that he needed to get to the marsh, that he would not be able to breathe right until he was on the water and hidden in the reeds.



				





Three
 The two small solars were already gone by the time Edward arrived at his station on the marsh, but that was no matter, a canoe would be better. On the edge of combustion with fear, anger, longing, and anxiety chasing themselves like otters, he needed to be doing something strenuous. He could hardly breathe as he lowered the canoe from the rack, and it wasn't until he was paddling along Hog Creek that his heart slowed and he regained a sense of where he was, not in some never land of  violence and fear, but safe on the marsh, buoyed up by water, under the vast fenland sky. He passed a clump of reeds, their laden seed heads gleaming white and silver in the sun. He saw the little hand and foot prints of a raccoon in the black mud along the creek, heard the abrupt splash of a frog, and the softer, almost seamless, entrance of a snake in the water. Any year now he expected the first alligator, though his colleagues felt the climate was still too cold. Edward thought the reptiles inevitable and kept his eyes open. 
Today, though, a pleasantly cool breeze combed the reeds. The green-gold grasses rippled like the fur of some giant animal, and passing clouds darkened patches of the bright landscape. In his agitation, Edward had neglected to bring his collecting gear, record slate, and storage jars. When he passed the first water level gauge, he had to write the number on the back of a dance ticket. He knew that he should go back to sign in properly and begin the day right, but he feared, actually feared, leaving the water. Kara was right: he was a true Aqua; he belonged here.
And Kara? Ah, that was the question, the excruciating question. He shipped the paddle so that he could crank and open his Komunikator; he scrolled right to CrimeBits. It was inconceivable that anyone had harmed Kara, though such things happened, but not to us, Edward told himself. Not to us. The neighbors had heard nothing, seen nothing. And wouldn't they? The streets were crowded. If Edythe was to be believed, Kara had not gone out until  mid afternoon, the very safest time, and he had retraced her usual routes not more than a couple hours later. The only real danger was if she'd been accosted on the stairs or discovered an intruder in her apartment. How well did he know that Norton on the second floor, who kept such odd hours? What was his work, anyway? Something with the water system or the sanitation. Dirty water, compost, trash removal, defecation and decay all had sinister connotations for Edward. Even Rayli, homely and near-sighted would see a beauty like Kara well enough to _ but here Edward caught his breath. Rayli was happily married to the perfectly nice Eva; he was a decent man and someone known. The intimacy of the small closed city suddenly weighed on Edward. He felt that there would be such comfort in strangers, in knowing there were strangers, in blaming someone strange. 
Control, control! His imagination was beginning to throw up images of the Fishers of the neighborhood, of dancers at the Circles, of the local Carters, and Edward knew that it would reach Jonas and Harris in a moment if he couldn't rein it in. After a last scroll through the CrimeBits updates, he snapped his Komunikator shut and resumed paddling. If he knew nothing else, he knew the marsh. If Kara was somewhere in the reeds he'd find her, he and no one else. And if she was not there, as he hoped, profoundly, desperately hoped, he must prepare for Absence, for an alien and deeper marsh.
Just before lunch, when, mosquito bitten and steaming with heat, he was approaching the very western edge of the marshland, Edward got a call on his Komunikator. Jimb, the section master, was wondering where he was, why he hadn't signed in, and why, if he was on the water, he hadn't taken his kit. Edward explained as best he could, and Jimb was sympathetic_ Kara had taught his niece _ but when Edward closed off, he felt his chest tighten. Disappearances hacked a hole in the world. No man is an island _ how did that go? If a promontory falls into the sea, Europe is the less _ something like that. Ancient, ancient, yet true, and truer now, when so many promontories had, if not collapsed, drowned and their inhabitants with them. So when Kara, who had been part of so many worlds, his own included, vanished, she left behind a void that was filled by suspicion. Blameless though he was, Edward could feel it settle about him; he was the last seen by, after all, and he knew that awareness was behind his own sudden mistrust of their neighbors, their friends. If he was suspect, who could be considered innocent?
But was he really blameless, asked a little gnawing voice, quick as a rat? While he'd sat over coffee in the Bulwark, while he'd stared at the marshes and delayed seeing her, yes, delayed, fearful of her illness, of her depression, of Melankol, Kara had vanished. He had let her go without his farewell, even without his notice, so he was not innocent after all. For the resulting darkness there was no cure but to paddle on back up the Hog and examine each little tidal rivulet he passed. Would Harris be on the marsh yet? Would the SafetyMen already be searching? Edward thought not; there were procedures, questions, a look at what Harris always called the locus. But if he was not on the water already, it was late, too late. The tide was on the turn; Edward could feel it. In a couple of hours the little  streams would be no more than muddy, impassable furrows, the haunt of sandpipers, willets, and gulls; the bulk of the marsh would be impassable until the next tide. Now was the time to thread the waterways, to circle the city, to search. 
The white glitter of the sun was well below the tallest reeds when Edward returned, exhausted, to the station. Although he did not know it, Kara was now on CrimeBits, tentatively as a Disappearance. Jimb greeted him kindly and said nothing when Edward started transferring gauge readings from dance stubs to his record slate. 
"We're so sorry," he said, and Edward knew then that it was official.
His legs were stiff from kneeling in the canoe, but it was shock that made them weak. He sat down on one of the benches and rested his hands on his knees. He had covered a huge expanse of the marsh, but no one could expect completeness in that shifting landscape. Edward had trusted to some hidden sympathy, to some mysterious, more subtle tide to lead him to Kara. And it would have. It would have. He raised his head defiantly and said, "I'm sure she's not in the marsh."
Jimb shrugged. If Kara was really gone, the marsh was much the most likely, but there were always exceptions, and loving precision, he conceded that. 
When the station master did not produce any counter argument, Edward  began to walk restlessly around the room. There were rumors of abductions _ not real Absences. Some said there were unauthorized outposts on the new islands; others claimed there were Manhattan tower apartments that were still viable, high, high up over the water and run on ancient generators. You could hear them on still nights, the watermen said, though others claimed it was the wind blowing through empty windows, and eccentrics held that both wind and noise were ghosts. The latter was all Super, but still, was it more fanciful than Absence? Too soon to think of that, Edward told himself. There's an explanation, a reason; she is safe _ somewhere. He had to believe that.
He stopped by the SafetyPoint on his way home. Harris was gone and the duty man with shaved head and doleful expression could not, or would not, give out any information. Edward went heavily back down the stone steps. The sky was still light, but the great walls shadowed the dike road, and between shadow and glare, he pushed his way through the crowds almost unseeing. At the juncture of the Raised Road, he was halted by a cluster of people with their bundles and carts. Where were the damn SafetyMen? He edged his way through the throng until he was close enough to hear a voice over the usual city sounds of pavement, wind, gulls, and cart wheels. The voice was deep and resonant, if a trifle hoarse, like an old string instrument marred with clicks and buzzes but still operating on some select and suggestive vibration. Edward felt the voice before he could distinguish the words; pressing closer yet, he saw it belonged to one of the WaterPriests. This one was broad shouldered and lanky with a wispy goatish beard, very dark brows, and the wild, intent expression of a drummer at an all night Circle. He was perched on a ladder set atop a cart, and the last light of the sunset had dyed his high brow and jutting cheekbones a deep pinkish brown.
"...from water we come," the man shouted. 
"From water," some of the crowd repeated. Edward felt  a prickling uneasiness at their response. Though the WaterPriests were among the chief purveyors of Super, he had always discounted their influence. But here was a crowd blocking the dike road.
"We swim in water in our mother's womb, and we carry water within our cells. Water is the source."
"The source!" It seemed to Edward that more in the crowd were responding, drawn in like fish after a tide. 
"Water is the source of all life. Water is our origin, and ultimately we return to water. Water is our destiny."
"Destiny," echoed the crowd.
"No one has a different path," said the WaterPriest, his voice almost a whisper. "All are bound to water, bound to seek water, bound to come to water at the last." He paused and looked around the shadowed faces. "You are in darkness," he said portentously. 
The priest's somber tone was a rhetorical trick, familiar along with the usual vague promises and the suggestion, clearly spurious, of hidden knowledge. "You seek light, but you want water. Water has both light and darkness, warmth and cool, water takes away your faults, your griefs..."
His voice was insinuating, seductive, yet carrying, too. It projected without effort over the crowd, over the sounds of the traffic, the random voices of the city. Enticing, threatening, consoling _ even Edward felt susceptible and that aroused his fear: Could Kara have listened to this? Her windows looked out toward the Raised Road. How often had he seen her leaning out her window, the sun on her face, cheerfully contemplating the bustle, the crowds, the protective cluster of pastel buildings? Oh, in those days, she would have turned back, called, "Come listen to this," laughed at such earnest Super. But now? Now when she was afflicted with Pastolgia, or admit it, Melankol, what would be the effect? He could feel his heart beating faster. Had she come out to listen? Had she? No, no, she would not have left the apartment. But suppose she had?
"... you need to return to water, to the source of life," the WaterPriest cried, his voice rising in sound and intensity. 
What might Kara have done? It was unthinkable, but Edward could not put the idea out of his mind. He, himself, had found so many, so many who had "returned to water," who had joined their ancestors in the flood, who had ended grief or guilt or loneliness.
"I welcome you to your destiny. I welcome you to water."
"To a muddy grave," Edward shouted, half beside himself with anxiety. "Don't listen to him!" Turning now to the faces on either side. "Don't let him entice you to the marsh. I know the water, I work on the marsh."
"Water forgives all," said the priest. His voice rose but his delivery did not falter.  "You must come to water."
"You must get the hell out of here!" There was a protesting murmur from the crowd, and Edward was jostled from both sides. "He calls you to water and I have to haul up the corpses!" he shouted furiously. "He leads you to madness and your death!"
"Water will calm you," said the priest. "Water soothes, water takes away our sins."
 "Takes away our sins," echoed the crowd, angered and perhaps confused by Edward's unexpected and irregular outburst.
He tried to make himself heard over the increasing tumult, but, with the press around the WaterPriest and an increasingly impatient mass of Carters and pedestrians blocked by the gathering, his words were lost. Shoved by one of the priest's devotees, Edward struck back, causing gasps and curses and producing a flurry of blows that sent him to the pavement with blood on his face. He might have been injured seriously, if some of the Carters, anxious to finish their routes, had not waded into the fray. 
In a moment, there was general confusion. The normal restraint of the  city vanished in one of the sudden eruptions of violent emotion that periodically afflicted its inhabitants and slicked the streets with blood. Within an hour, not one would be able to define what had touched off the Fraka, setting neighbor against neighbor and exploding all the carefully cultivated civility of the streets. The WaterPriest kept shouting over the throng, but violence had broken the spell of his words, and the arrival of SafetyMen with their whistles and truncheons put an end to his oration. 
Holding a cloth to his bleeding nose, Edward staggered off the street and collapsed in a doorway. The roadway seemed removed from normal life and his whole perception threatened to melt at the edges. He was trying to get his breathing under control when he was confronted by a SafetyMan, slate, pen _ and truncheon _ at the ready.
"You should be ticketed." The SafetyMan was small and dark with a fine aquiline nose and a severe expression. 
Edward raised one hand indifferently. "That water snake led Kara away," he said. "How you can let him rave when there are so many people with troubles?" He didn't dare say more. He was exhausted; his mouth and his ribs hurt and his right knee was throbbing. 
"He is a licensed WaterPriest," said the SafetyMan. "There are those who believe." Just the same, he did not proceed with the ticket, and Edward understood that he might gain some sympathy if he made an effort. 
"Kara Wistley has disappeared," he said. "It's official today. We've been together for two years. Her apartment is over there." He waved his hand in the general direction of Kara's building. "In her state of mind, if she listened to all that Super about water _." He stopped again. The SafetyMan had probably never heard the WaterPriest, had never listened to that seductive voice promising calm and happiness. Yes, he thought, for Kara, that voice would have suggested happiness. 
The SafetyMan checked his Komunikator and seemed to hesitate. "Who can speak for you?" he asked finally. "Who can confirm your relationship to Kara Wistley?"
Edward gave Baba's name and Harris's _ a senior SafetyMan as reference carried weight, though Edward's name was duly entered and he was warned to stay away from the WaterPriests. "This leniency is strictly out of respect for your loss," the SafetyMan said as he helped Edward up. "Strictly."
Edward thanked him and started a slow and painful walk home. There was no point in returning to Kara's apartment now. It was official; she was gone. 

				








 Four

	Tuesday morning came in a white aureole of mist. Stiff and sore, Edward found some vegetables and rice cakes for a cold breakfast and went down to the Station, where he secured a solar. He ran it to one of the tidal ponds. As the bright sun burned away the morning mist, Edward lay on the deck with his eyes closed, indifferent to his gauges and meters. Around him were the sounds of the marsh: a redwing's call, the harsh chatter of a grackle, the low, growling honk of a great blue heron. If he lay there long enough and still enough, the life of the marsh would resume around him. Curious minks, muskrats and otters would explore the solar, turtles would clamber onto the deck to take the sun, gulls would drop mollusks on the prow to break the shells, raccoons and possums would make nests, and minnows, hide in the shadow of the boat. Flies would be joined by vultures, both turkey and black, and in time, he and all his curious memories, even his love for Kara, would vanish an efflorescence of microbes. His flesh would be rendered to water and feed the marsh.
	Edward opened his eyes to brush away a mosquito. He could understand the temptation to stay out here forever, away from the noise and complications of the city, away from the joys and sorrows of other people. He and the WaterPriest had certain disturbing points in common, and, floundering for a distinction, Edward wondered if that fanatical cleric had ever been on the marsh. Not lately, pale as he was; no love on the water for him, either. Never, Edward was sure of it, and in spite of miseries spiritual and physical, he smiled, remembering a marsh islet hardly bigger than a rug, with a rock, a few scraggly bushes and a stretch of silky grasses touched with red. Late in the year, it must have been; the mosquitoes weren't bad, and Kara had agreed to paddle through the marsh with him. Early days for sure, when she was still well, when she wanted to know all about his work, about his life, about him. "My folks say I have water in my bones," he joked. "So you need to come out on the marsh with me." 
	She laughed, a soft, flirtatious laugh. Had there been, even then, something elusive about her? Something just beyond his ability to grasp? Edward couldn't decide. They had been cautious, the two of them, uncertain, not of their attraction, which had been almost immediate _ a kiss at a Circle arcing psychic sparks _ but of their seriousness. Curious, even then, how seriousness, permanence, had been an issue. In the relative freedom of real youth _ dancing, and sometimes more, but not too much, at the Youth Circles; parties on the river, tide runner trips to watch the SurferKlubs _ they had always been in groups, always, in one way or another, under adult or peer surveillance, whether in tiny parental apartments, on the boats, or in the streets. The chance of apartments, contingent on their employment contracts for 15 years in the CC, presented them with decisions. They were tempted both ways _ to leave for the Highlands (but could they manage to do that together?) to stay with new adult freedoms (but were they ready for all consequences?). Kara dithered, and Edward, crazy for her, suggested the afternoon on the marsh.
Where was that island? Not near the Hog, no, he thought on this side, near this pool. His heart began to hammer in his ears, setting his sore head and nose throbbing. How was it he had come here? Yesterday he had known, really known that he would find her if she was in the marsh. He had paddled himself to exhaustion in that conviction and then been sure, almost sure, she was elsewhere. But today _ he sat up, adjusted the sail, set the battery powered auxiliary and moved across the wide pool and along a passage in the marsh grass. Was that a shrub, a tree? Yes, a little bayberry, bigger than he remembered, still surviving: Get an elevation of even a foot or two above water, and you entered another ecosystem. He would have told Kara that, though what he said and what she replied were long lost to memory. Words are not, at such moments, of great importance, not when every gesture, every touch taps the springs of existence. Edward remembered that, and the sound of the reeds, and the way the wind lifted her fine, soft hair. Since her disappearance, he'd had difficulty bringing her features into clear focus, but now he saw her face with the dappling of freckles that gave her the look of some lovely wild thing and her smile under the wide straw hat set his heart to the old, dominating rhythm. This was the island. He was sure of it. He stopped the solar and heaved himself painfully over the side and onto the grass, causing the whole tiny islet to sway and dip at his step. Damper than it had been. Water was rising through the marsh, and though the gauges showed only the tiniest increases, Edward felt that more was coming, that they were due for a minor Rising. Soon. He thought soon. He struggled over the hummocks to the small bit of higher ground he'd remembered, rug-sized, the grass tinged with gold and rust, then stood, anxious, his rapid gaze searching the bushes and grasses, taking in bits of broken wood, a patch of glasswort, some sea lavender (check), a stray butterfly. 
No sign of her; surely she would have been here. Surely, and in an intense spasm of Rembrance, Edward dropped to his knees. The warm breeze carried the smell of her perfume, and in some neglected corner of his mind's eye, he saw her long, straight hair spread against the grass and his hands reaching for her face, her breast. Then the darkness of passion obliterated detail; the body remembers in its own way. Edward shuddered and passed his hand over his face. They had been awkward and intense together and afterward there was blood on her thighs and on his penis. He'd held her in his arms and comforted her.  Wiping away the blood, he touched the red tip of his finger to his tongue. "We've exchanged fluids," he said _ the words of Commitment.
"Yes," she said. 
She should have repeated them, he thought. Then their union would have been valid even without witnesses. We have exchanged fluids; we have joined waters. The ritual of the WaterPriests, a legal form of Commitment since the earliest Risings. She had eluded him at that moment, and though they had signed to remain in the CC, though they were in and out of each other's apartments day and night, they remained UnCommitted; there were no children; they kept their lodgings. He loved his rooms on the marsh; she liked quiet, privacy, time by herself_ they each had excuses; each was content. Then she was afflicted, and amid the vastness of the marsh, Edward saw an escape, if he chose, from watching what Melankol might do to her. 
"Not true,  never," he cried to the marsh and pounded the spongy soil into a muddy crater that slowly filled with water. The little island was sinking. When he fell forward, Edward felt dampness under the dry fabric of the grasses and joined it with his tears.

Two days later Edward's Komunikator summoned him to the SafetyPoint on the dike, where he found Harris waiting for him.
"Have you news?" Edward was too overwrought even for a greeting. The SafetyMen had been on the marsh two days running. He'd seen them with Jonas in one of the bigger solars, searching in the familiar zigzag pattern. Even at a distance, Edward had seen the grappling hooks. "Has Kara been found?" 
 "Sit down," Harris said. "There is no news. That's good if you want to look at it that way."
Edward let out his breath. Kara was still missing; she was still potentially alive and well. "I'd seen you on the marsh. I thought_"
Harris reached for a slate. "You were in a Fraka the other day."
"I wasn't ticketed," Edward said quickly. "It was nothing."
"Let me decide that." Harris used his best Voice of Authority, and Edward had no choice but to recount the whole business. 
"Have you evidence that Kara was influenced in any way by this WaterPriest?" he asked when Edward was finished.
"No, I'd have told you immediately. But her windows overlook the Raised Road and in her present state of mind_"
"Her state of mind would carry more weight," said Harris, "if she had reported for treatment."
"She was afraid. Her job_ her job was keeping her going financially and emotionally."
"She might have moved in with you. Wouldn't that have been possible?"
 Edward slumped back in his seat. "Kara hasn't been in my apartment for months. It overlooks the marshes. She can't bear the open expanse, the water."
Harris's expression underwent a subtle modulation, reminding Edward that the SafetyMan was said to be a very clever interrogator. "So what makes you believe she would venture onto the marshes for this WaterPriest if she wouldn't even visit your apartment?"
"Have you heard him, Harris? Have you? You should have seen the crowd. He had them here." Edward closed his open hand. "It's scary stuff. His voice is _ not attractive but incredibly insinuating. He promises that your troubles can be ended, that you can find peace _ he all but invites people to suicide."
"Yet you do not think Kara is in the marsh."
"I would have found her," Edward said. "I have searched. I would have sensed where she was."
Harris shrugged. It was true that Edward had a sharp eye and that he knew the marsh as well as anyone. By the same token, if he'd had anything to do with the woman's disappearance, he would have known where to hide her body or, alternately, been wise enough to avoid the marsh altogether. Harris was unsure which was most likely and said, "There is something else. We are trying to trace all Kara's contacts in the city."
"I've given you every name I know."
"Do you recognize this one?" Harris passed over a slip of paper. 
"Alpon Wynd?" Edward shook his head, aware of the SafetyMan's intent gaze. "Never heard of him. What does he do?"
"He is a Resurrector," said Harris. "We hoped you could confirm our initial report. That might take the investigation in a new direction."
"She had no contact with Resurrectors," Edward said very positively. Here he hesitated, realizing something he had overlooked. "But she is a collector in a small way. She knows every antique dealer in the city."
Harris nodded; he had been surprised at some of Kara's possessions. "And where do dealers get their antiques?
"But Resurrectors! Don't all of them live by the river? Aren't they working on the boats? It's not possible. Kara walked blocks to avoid even a glimpse of the water. She was in bad shape except at work, Harris. I couldn't risk reporting her. To lose her job would have killed her."
"And yet she apparently knew Alpon Wynd."
"Who says?" Edward demanded. "I want to hear this for myself."
"You know I cannot tell you," said Harris. "Not when you are last seen by, not anyway, but especially not you."
Edward put his face in his hands. It took him a minute to control himself. To quarrel with Harris would be foolish, even dangerous. The Fraka was against him, and his suspicions of the WaterPriest, so logical and reasonable, had been turned inside out; he would have to think, think whom Kara might have trusted over him. No matter how painful_
	He straightened up. "I will try to remember," he said. "Perhaps she did mention this Wynd, perhaps she did."
	He was part way down the outside stair before his mind, slowed by grief and anger, brought up Baba. If anyone knew Kara's friends, it would be Baba. He would see her tonight. 
	
	A misty rain began as Edward was finishing his paperwork at the marsh station, and the streets were dark early and slicked with water. The reflectors were almost lost in the fog, and when he set out for Baba's apartment, even the building night lights provided only a thin, watery glow. 
"Edward," she said, surprised to see him and, he feared, maybe not pleased. He was last seen by after all and who knew what she, or indeed his other friends, might think? 
"Can I come in?" It was windy and damp in the open corridor that ran along the side of Baba's apartment.
She stepped back, holding the door open for him. "Have you eaten?"
He realized he had not and hadn't thought to buy anything, either.
"I'm just starting," she said. "You can eat with me."
"Baba, I'm sorry. This isn't the right time. I wasn't thinking."
"Don't be dumb. It's only pancakes and dried fish. It was too wet to go shopping."
Edward sat down at the small round table. Baba kept a pretty cloth on hers and bright plates. He thought of so many similar dinners with Kara, of her table in the same, soft concentrated light, of nights like this with rain outside and wind beating against the glass. For a moment, he could not speak. Then Baba brought out a pot of soup, vegetable with rice and greens, and gave him a cup. Edward drank it gratefully. "I forgot to have lunch."
Baba raised her eyebrows. 
"I had to see Harris." Edward thought there was no point in delaying his question no matter what it did to the atmosphere. "Did you know Kara had contacts with the Resurrectors?"
Baba nodded. "Yes. That is, I guessed she did."
"You might have told me; you might have warned me." Edward felt his anger returning. 
"I wasn't sure. Then when I was questioned they asked about that Wynd."
"Alpon," Edward said.
"That's right. And I realized that I knew the name, that she had mentioned him."
Edward leaned forward. "When, when did she mention him?"
"It was just casually, in connection with about some little thing she'd picked up. A small metal dog, very old, very dark with traces of white paint? Did you see that?" She put down her fork and held her thumb and fore finger apart to indicate the size.
Edward tried to remember. "I'd have to look in her apartment. She had a lot of curios."
"This one was special. Apparently Wynd has been prospecting down river. Near Higganum." She didn't need to add that Kara's people had come from the town.
"Lots of deep water there. That's no shallow water operation."
"She mentioned, just in passing, how skillful Wynd was. He has a barge, lives on it much of the time, apparently."
"What was she hoping for, Baba? After all this time? What was it she wanted?" He leaned across the table, searching Baba's face.
"You and I know it wasn't possible, but something, anything from the past, from the town."
Edward leaned back so abruptly that his chair, which had been tipped forward in his interest and agitation, smacked down on the cement floor with a thump. He felt disgusted and frightened at the same time and surprised, too, which was foolish, because just about everyone at one time or another had felt the same craving for something from before the Risings. People bought house numbers if they matched an old address, sometimes for great sums, and there was a low end trade in architectural remnants, lengths of window trim, cornices, even door knobs. 
"In long past they sold saints bones," Edward said.
"She felt that she might still get well," Baba said gently. "I remember her saying that it wouldn't take much."
Edward nodded. Kara had said the same to him. One of the most painful aspects of her illness had been her conviction that there was some token, some magic item that would lift her depression. Thinking about it now, Edward saw their many trips to the bazaar in a different light. Maybe it had never been just fun, just the pleasure of collecting, maybe she had always been searching, maybe she had feared Melankol from the start. 
"She said one day she needed an anchor. An anchor in the past."
"There is no past," Edward cried passionately. "The past is gone beyond recovery and there is no anchor anywhere. The WaterPriests are right about that: There is only fluid and change and dissolution ahead for us all."

Wynd's barge was anchored on the northeast side of the city, well past the cranes, jetties, and unloading ports. Overhead, a stiff wind was breaking up the cloud cover, and the rain had eased by the time Edward reached the steps to the narrow quay. There was just enough moonlight for him to manage the steep and slippery descent. As Marksh-Keeper, he didn't work the river side, and he was surprised to see the great variety of buildings that had fastened onto the dike like swallows' nests or had taken advantage of the solid quay to balance, stork-like, on stilts. Thin plumes of smoke issued from stacks in the roofs; the Resurrectors, as collectors and scavengers, had ready access to fuel and were exempt de facto, if not de jure, from most of the pollution regulations. As Edward approached the first of the shadowy huts, a dog set up a chain reaction of barks and howls, but no one appeared except the water rat that darted across the path to rustle under a pile of debris. Even with the occasional friendly gleam of a lantern or candle, Edward did not feel quite easy. He wished he'd brought a marsh pole or a grappling hook with him. 
Besides the shacks, many of which stood in their own pools of dirty water, his progress was slowed by mooring posts and drying racks for fish and nets. There were tables and flat rocks used for cutting up fish, many stinking and ill-cleaned, and eroded places in the quay made the footing treacherous at night. Edward had walked far enough to wonder if he had taken the wrong stairs, before he saw a barge with a shed on its deck. A crane dominated the stern, and several sturdy rowboats hung like giant mussels along the side. The barge was anchored well off shore, but it trailed an improvised pontoon jetty of boards laid over old metal drums. Edward spotted a light glimmering in the shed windows, and when he neared the side, a large and deep-voiced boat dog set up a warning. 
"Hello, hello! Mr. Wynd," Edward shouted, unwilling to risk climbing up the ladder in the face of the snarling animal. "Hello. I've come to see Alpon Wynd." 
A moment, then a rectangle of light opened in the shed and a man stepped out on deck. "Who's that?"
"Edward Nempf. I'm a friend of Kara Wistley."
There was no answer.
 "Can I come aboard?"
"Too dark to see you," answered the figure.
"I'm a Marsh-Keeper. I have my badge."
The silence bespoke hesitation. Marsh-Keepers and Resurrectors had complex relationships, sometimes opponents, sometimes collaborators. Edward made it a practice to be on good terms with the ones he met regularly.
"I'll need to see it. And remember, the dog is fierce. Put your hand on anything that's not yours and she'll  have it off."
With this kindly invitation, Edward started up the ladder, while the Resurrector, a wiry, stooped man with large, strong hands, restrained the dog. It was one of the old, special breeds, bigger than the typical water dog used in the marshes and on the river, with a large blunt head and a big, eager mouth. Edward kept well away from her, as he fished up the metal badge with his Marsh-Keeper's number on it.
"Who do you know?" asked the man in a voice made hoarse by fogs and damp. At close range, he looked not just old but ancient. This, Edward felt certain, was Wynd, himself.
He recited a list of Marsh-Keepers, Fishers, and Resurrectors, after which the man gave a grunt. He reassured the dog before releasing her to patrol the deck, then led Edward into the shed. 
It was a better dwelling than he would have expected, constructed from old steel cargo crates fitted with salvaged wood and much larger than the tiny apartment and station rooms Edward frequented. The interior struts of the crates had been fitted with hooks and brackets to suspend the bags, sacks, boxes, and baskets, doubtless full of salvaged goods, that overhung the living space like a bank of storm clouds. Two men lay asleep in hammocks _ the Resurrectors kept, Edward knew, irregular hours _ and he could make out several more men and women around a table at the far end of the long shed. They seemed to be eating or playing cards, but he felt their momentary attention. 
More than that, Edward could not perceive, for there was no electric, just a few lanterns that gave an orange glow to the lower part of the rooms and revealed his host's lined and furrowed face. Wynd's skin, naturally pale, had been burned and tanned to a dull sienna. His hair was short and white, his eyes, a pale blue. One of them had been overspread by a cloudy growth, but the other was burned bright and shrewd. He gestured to a chair and, after Edward sat down, said, "You forgot Harris on your list." 
His tone, if not actively hostile, was suspicious, and Edward thought it wisest to be candid. "I was getting to Harris," he said. "Harris is why I've come. He thought Kara knew you, Kara Wistley, who has Disappeared."
"I'll tell you what I told him: I didn't know her."
"Yet, she knew you _ or knew of you," Edward added tactfully.
Wynd raised his hands as if to say he was not responsible for his wide reputation. "I'm known as a careful man who can find goods."
"She was looking for something, something she needed desperately."
"You'd be surprised how many are in that position. For all the talk that all's well and everyone's recovered." He coughed and spat on the floor to show what he thought of that notion.
Edward shrugged and kept silent. Besides their salvage operations, the Resurrectors were suspected of smuggling Forbiddens. He thought it unlikely that Kara would risk one of the powerful and erratic Mind Alternators, known to be full of dangerous impurities, but you never could tell what people in the grip of Melankol might try.
"You, you're a Marsh-Keeper, an Aqua, right?"
Edward nodded. 
"Odd breed, rarer than you'd think _ the genuine, I mean. Just to be born post-dike is not enough, eh? Your people Watermen?"
"No," said Edward. "They were horrified when I applied."
"Mine, Watermen since before the Flood. The First Flood, I mean. I've been on the river myself for near eighty years. Water's been my livelihood. Higher the water gets, the more territory becomes mine. That's the way it is; disaster is my opportunity. Makes a man sad, sometimes, and sad makes foolish. And foolish involves you with Authority."
"She somehow made contact with you?" 
"Might have. But that's my business." He had a way of shifting between hostility and sympathy like a deceptive current. 
"Harris may make it his business." 
"The man's entitled with his position. What's yours that you come here in the night with questions?"
"We'd been together more than two years. She'd been unwell. I went to her apartment Sunday to find her gone."
Wynd grunted. "Most go missing wind up in the marsh. Or the river."
"She's not in the marsh. I've searched; Harris and the SafetyMen, too. The river _ I don't know. She was terrified of water."
"So you think she came here?" Wynd raised his head and his voice, too. Edward saw figures stirring in the hammocks. "Is that what you think?"
"No. No, I don't think so. Not here, not at night, certainly. But she wanted something, didn't she? Maybe from her old town?"
Before Wynd could answer, they were interrupted by light running feet. A girl no more than three or four appeared barelegged and shoeless in a short white gown. She was whimpering something unintelligible and rubbing her eyes, which seemed dazed by the light, the stranger.
"Just a dream," Wynd said softly to the child. "It was just a dream." He picked her up and set her on his knee. She put her thumb in her mouth and leaned confidently back against his shoulder.
"A fine girl," Edward said, noticing her dark curly hair, supple feet, and sturdy legs.
 "She dreams," Wynd said a little sadly, "she dreams of water. Five generations on the river and this one dreams of water. You see time means nothing; one adapts or one does not."
"Kara was her teacher," Edward guessed. 
"That's right. And I never met her, no matter what your friend Harris thinks. She sent a note and some old aerial photos."
"What did she want?" 
Wynd hesitated; Resurrectors were secretive and pretended their work was confidential. 
"It might be important," Edward said.  And then, when Wynd remained silent, "I need to understand. We were so close and yet I didn't know what it was she needed so badly."
"She wanted me to find their old house. She wanted to see it."
It was as he and Baba had guessed, only worse: The desire to go home was a common, if a deeply irrational, reaction. Some Resurrectors traded on it and ruined customers with ever delayed hopes and ever-larger bills. "How could she afford that?" 
"She couldn't. That's why she sent me the aerials. She thought some weather vanes might still be available. Not likely," Wynd said. "I told her that _ by message. Next thing I heard was Harris yelling from the pontoons, followed by yourself, disturbing the household, upsetting the child." He stood up at this and called to one of the women.
"Might she have tried someone else? Was there anyone else working that area of the river?"
But now Edward had gone too far. "How should I know? The human mind has more mysteries than a dozen drowned towns. Now get off my barge." Wynd gestured to one of the men lounging in the hammocks. "See Whistle doesn't have this one for a snack," he said.
A much younger man swung his legs onto the floor. He was tall enough so that his features were shadowed; this Resurrector was big and dark, and he moved as if equipped with a great deal of muscle. Edward followed him to the door without protest. When the dog ran up, ears pricked, the man laid a hand on her massive head. "Thirty seconds," he said. 
Edward stopped with his hand on the ladder. "And Kara Wistley?" 
"Would have been a good customer," the dark man replied. The moonlight revealed a cynical, unpleasant smile. "She would have done just about anything for a glimpse of home."
"What are you saying?" Edward demanded, fear and anxiety tipping him into anger. "What do you mean?"
The man gave him a shove, and Edward got in one wild punch before the dog lunged. He jumped backwards instinctively, grabbing for the ladder as he dropped, and wound up with a skinned palm and a handful of rust, feet dangling a few inches above the pontoon jetty. He dropped with a thump that set the contraption bouncing. The dog barked and snarled above, but though Edward shouted to the night and kicked the side of the barge, setting its metal plates ringing, there was no other response. 
He controlled himself after a minute and started back along the squalid track, the gloom from the dike houses and the ramshackle dwellings and even his own leaping shadow concealing the debris and garbage and the many small depressions in the paving. He stumbled twice before he reached the stairs. Impossible to envision Kara in this place with the water rats, the stench, the cobbled together dwellings, the casual sanitation, and the river running fast and deep only feet away. And if, as Wynd's colleague had hinted, she had somehow, in the grip of her illness, come here _ Edward shuddered and ran up the steps to escape the thought, his feet slipping and sliding on the slick and slimy treads.  He stopped when he regained the top of the dike and took a breath. With the rain cleared out, he could see Wynd's barge lying far below him on the river, its dark shape a smudge on the silver water, an almost picturesque detail in the moonlight. 
Up here there was no smell of fish, no wood and fat smoke on the wind, no river slime and worse underfoot, but his exit from the quay did nothing to lift his terrible recurrent anxiety. When he opened the door of Kara's empty apartment, he had crossed the threshold to foreign territory, to a land alien to the CC and the marsh and all he knew, a realm where anything might happen. That was what struck Edward most: Predictability seemed to have vanished and everywhere he looked, there was the possibility of some totally unexpected dimension to events. "She would have done just about anything," the man had said, as if he knew her price to the penny, as if the old man had deceived him, as if the old man didn't know everything that transpired on his barge. 
Edward shook his head to clear his thoughts. He had to stick with what was logical and reasonable: Kara feared the river; therefore she had never walked the dark quay, never negotiated the pontoon dock, never climbed the rusting ladder to Wynd's domain. And beyond that, he had to hold to what he knew of Kara, whom he had loved for years, whom he had trusted. He understood that the poisonous doubt he'd felt at the first thought of the Resurrectors was the worst, the most dangerous aspect of the business. He had to stay with reason and experience, his experience with Kara. He repeated this to himself several times as he set out along the dark curve of the dike. This was the long way home _ and not the safest route, either _ but his mind was in such turmoil that he had reached the Quinnak crossing before he realized his route had taken him to where the Fisher lived. Lower floor; Quinnak and Dike. He was facing the house. Edward took a breath and tapped on the door.

			














Five

The Fisher's house was on the lowest floor, right over a storage space filled with nets and lines and boats of various vintage and condition. When Edward knocked a second time the door opened. The Fisher was holding a candle, and rather than indicating any surprise, he simply nodded and stepped aside.
"I'm rather late," Edward said by way of apology.
"No moon earlier."
 Of course, he assumes I've come for a divination, a reading, Edward thought, and he was again astonished at how his feet had brought him Quinnak Street and how his hand had knocked on the door. 
"I was in the area," he said. "I had been down along the river." He was about to continue, to make conversation, to invent some excuse for disturbing the family _ he wanted to make clear his freedom from all Super, to state his skepticism, affirm his commitment to the Science-Side _ when the Fisher raised the candle slightly. Edward saw his face, thin with a long, prominent jaw, sallow, weathered skin and dark eyes set deep under a bony brow. Not an exceptional face at all, although the so-called Old Stock people were dwindling. You saw fewer and fewer really pale or really dark faces now, and it struck Edward that most of the Old Stock were connected somehow with the river or the marsh. They seemed not quite integrated with the close-knit life of the CC, preferring the open sky and water; they tended to be real Aquas. Nothing exceptional even there, and yet Edward was struck by the man's eyes and by his expression. He thought knowledgeable sorrow was the closest he could come to defining it, knowledgeable sorrow and an exceptional sense of patience, for now he waited silently, allowing Edward to study his face.
"Can you find her?"
"I can try. Megl!" he called to someone in another room. "Bring me the basin, please."
A very short woman with dark hair going gray, a large nose, and small dark eyes appeared. Her kindly smile was reflected in a large, shallow basin polished to mirror brightness. 
"A moment," said the Fisher. He stepped into one of the back rooms, leaving Edward with the woman. 
"You have lost someone," she said.
Edward was once again tempted to prevaricate, to deny his very presence there, but he found himself nodding his head.
"A great mystery," she said, "but we don't have our feet on the ground here. People get to feel they might fly off at any moment." She smiled again as if she knew this for a fact, and Edward was about to ask for her reasons, when the Fisher returned, wearing a black hat with a narrow brim and a clean white shirt. He'd draped a white scarf around his shoulders, and he carried a water pitcher. He nodded to the woman, then, indicating that Edward should take the candle, led the way. 
Four flights up the dark stairwell, a door opened onto the roof. Light from the moon soaked clouds illuminated a row of drying sheds and a dense cluster of smoke houses that filled the air with the smell of burning wood and preserved fish. The Fisher picked his way among these small buildings to a bench overlooking the river. He set the basin down carefully and filled it with water, creating a beautiful, swirling  reflection of the mottled sky. Then he leaned over and blew out the candle.
They sat on either side of the basin in a lengthening silence that surprised Edward, who had expected chanting or prayers or some theatrical pantomime. This was like out-waiting some hidden bittern or otter in the marsh. Around them were the soft night noises of frogs, insects, and nighthawks, and the sound, which Edward perhaps imagined, of wind moving through the reeds. Occasionally the Fisher would lean over to adjust the basin, moving it an inch one way or the other, but whenever they made eye contact, there was no response. The Fisher sat upright, mentally far away but clearly alert for any change, for when, at last, the moon surged free from the clouds, he immediately tilted the basin and leaned forward to study the white image. Edward was impressed, in spite of himself, with the simplicity of the man's technique and by his obvious sincerity. Nothing happened for what seemed like a very long time, allowing Edward to become conscious of  his companion's slow and quiet breathing. The Fisher stared into the basin where the moonlight glimmered; Edward felt the lingering dampness in the air, smelled the acrid smoke from the surrounding huts. The image of the moon seemed to expand and waver, breaking free of the confining basin, and Edward might have fallen asleep, for the declining moon had escaped with its reflection before the Fisher stood up. He lifted the basin high overhead, then stepped to one side and poured the water out to the north, east, south, and west. He put the pitcher inside the basin, dried his hands on his scarf, and turned to Edward.
"She is alive." 
Edward jumped up, relief flooding through him. "I knew it! I knew she was not in the marsh." 
The Fisher held up his hand in warning. "She has not Disappeared, but she is not here, either. She has become Absent."
"But she is somewhere. She is alive?" He wanted to be reassured, to hear it again.
"She is alive," said the Fisher, who seemed quite without doubt. "Where the Absent go, I cannot tell you. I am sorry."
Edward reached out and touched the man's shoulder. "That she is alive_" he said and, in a great confusion of emotion, turned toward the stair. His sense of relief remained through his futile attempts to compensate the Fisher _ "There will come a time," was all the man said, meaning Edward might do him a favor in turn_ and the long walk back through the dark streets to his own apartment. It was only in the morning that his relief at escaping the worst turned to a new anxiety: Kara was alive but she might remain Absent for a long time, forever, even. And yet, though he wondered at it, he put credence in the Fisher's judgment: Kara had not Disappeared, she was Absent. She might Return.
When Edward was called in to the SafetyPoint a week later, he found, somewhat to his surprise, that Harris agreed. The weather had remained damp and unsettled, and the SafetyPoint reeked with mildew. Harris looked tired and pale behind his cluttered desk. After he greeted Edward, he tapped the tottering stack of slates belonging to the Wistley investigation and counted off what had been done: Three days of searches in the marsh _ "plus your own efforts," he added. Questioning of all known contacts _ "some of whom you've met," _ this reproachfully, for he had somehow learned of Edward's night visit to the barge. Complete inspection of Kara's apartment and belongings; investigation of family and of medical history. He raised his broad yellow hands and laid them down flat on the desk. He had large, strong fingers, and with coarse, not too clean, nails. Edward realized that in all matters relating to Kara his perceptions had been preternaturally sharpened, right down to noticing the subtle colors of the slates and the faint sprinklings of mold on the walls. 
"We have no motive, no enemies. There is a diagnosis of Melankol_" Edward started to protest, and Harris raised a warning hand _ "but that is consistent with either Disappearance or Absence. Your own life has been extensively scrutinized." Here he paused and looked at Edward, who could only shrug nervously. "Nothing suggests that she was harmed, and there is no evidence that she harmed herself. I am closing the case as Absence."
Edward let out his breath at this confirmation of the Fisher's curious ritual.
"I know this is in some ways _ " Harris hesitated _ "a relief, in some ways, perhaps in most ways, unsatisfactory."
"She is alive," Edward said. "What matters is that she is alive. With Disappearance _"
"Oh, certainly," said Harris, who was pleased at Edward's reaction. "And speaking as a friend, I am glad, and glad for you. However, in my experience, Absence is in some ways a harder adjustment. There is the uncertainty, you see."
Edward nodded. "Yet some Return. I must remember that. Some Return."
"A cause for hope," said Harris. "Of course, any Return must be reported promptly. Cases of Absence are filed with the proviso that they can be reopened at any time." He stood up and extended his hand across the desk. Edward realized this was the first time since Kara vanished that the SafetyMan had shaken his hand. His status had changed; he had been a suspect; now he was officially the bereaved. 
Edward returned to the marsh in a happier mood, but as Harris had predicted, he found it hard to settle. Kara was always in his mind. Evenings were worse, because he had spent most of them with her, and he came even to miss the bad ones, when she was sunk in depression or lost to nerves. He visited her apartment almost daily on the excuse of watering the plants and airing the rooms; each time he entered with hope and left with a mix of disappointment and anger. If she was Absent, she could return and why not? He had moments of blaming her, followed by pangs of remorse. 
But all that was only to be expected. What he hadn't anticipated was that she would haunt him on the water. That he would be out among his gauges and lines and traps and feel her presence. That she would appear at the very corner of his perception as he paddled through the mist. That the slightest thing _ a pretty speckled salamander or butterfly; a certain shadow on the grasses; a particular color on the river _  would stir memory and strike him with a quick interior pain that allowed no comfort. In Absence, she seemed to have multiplied her presence so that everything reminded him of her and of his grief. Edward searched for her obsessively, unable to outrun his own thoughts.
One night, feeling that BatWing, with all its memories and associations would be intolerable, he danced until dawn with Baba at The Otter, stamping and jumping and setting the wooden floor jouncing. Another night, operating on the theory that Kara would return to a familiar place, he arrived at the 'Wing just after opening and danced in the Circle until he found tears streaming down his face. 
Nor were things better closer to home. His dad, who had always considered Kara too high strung and moody, angered Edward with advice about new people, as if some convenient Kara-substitute were sauntering even now along the dike, radiant with health, looking for love. His mother, admittedly ingenious, said he needed to take up something constructive, some hobby, and envisioned him weaving marsh grasses into mats or making driftwood into chairs. Though Edward loved his parents, the concern that overhung every visit like a louring sea fog nearly stifled him and left him feeling guilty. 
He took to checking his Komunikator obsessively for news of Absences, for updates on those who had become Absent and on the rare Returns, but he didn't take the logical next step until a few weeks later, after he and Jonas knocked off early one day. They'd gotten caught in a downpour far out on the marsh and had taken refuge in an old Fisher hut. Rain dripped through the rotting thatch and blew in swirls off the water. Edward stared gloomily into the wet; work, especially traveling the marsh, was his solace, and rainy days confined to the Station put him in a foul mood. They expected the shower to be over quickly, but when the rain kept sluicing down like a gray liquid curtain, Jonas dashed to the solar for a bottle of the Swamp Magic they'd confiscated from a clandestine still. 
"That's evidence," said Edward, who was mostly conscientious and by the book, unlike Jonas, who always had some side deals going and knew more than he should about both Resurrectors and StillWorks.
"You need," said Jonas, cracking the seal. "They'll never remember if it was twenty or twenty-one or twenty-two bottles."
"Better for them if fewer," Edward admitted, and, not being an habitual drinker, the potent distillation hit him hard. He came to himself again well after midnight, lying in the bottom of the solar, his clothes wet with dew and his face swollen with bites. He suffered a touch of marsh fever as a consequence and had to be Listed. For several days, the StationMaster refused to allow him on the water, and during that feverish, homebound spell Edward opened his Komunikator to the Absence list and noticed Diorina Ashansa's name and address still posted. Of all the Absences, hers interested him most, because she'd gone on the list the very day Kara vanished. Ashansa's apartment was within three blocks, and, though he was sweating and dizzy, Edward was sure he could manage. With the skewed logic of fever, he was not only sure she'd had a room mate, a lover, a companion but that the person would be home, waiting, as it were, for his, Edward's, arrival. Irritated by the well-meant condolences and attentions of his friends and family, he found the idea of talking to someone who had experienced Absence irresistible.
After changing his soaking shirt, he drank another infusion of Meadowsweet for his fever and went down to the street. He ached behind his eyes and his joints hurt, but the bright sky overhead cheered him on to Ashansa's apartment block. He took the stair to the third floor and knocked on her door. Silence. His fever had a way of turning time to taffy, of stretching and deforming it and pushing it into odd corners. Edward was unclear how many times he knocked or how long he waited, but he had a perception of time passing, curling, extending _ and then the door opened on the smallest, oldest woman he had ever seen. This was a true Ancient; her skin a web of wrinkles, her jowls fallen, her light eyes half hidden by their deep pouches and her thick glasses. 
"Diorina? Diorina?" Then she focused on him. "Who are you?"
Edward fumbled in his pocket for his Keeper's badge. "I'm employed on the marshes. Edward Nempf."
"Have you found her? Have you found my Diorina?"
"No, no, nothing like that. Sorry to be so stupid, I didn't think of the shock _ a touch of marsh fever."
She pursed her lips and gave him a critical look, then extended a white, leathery hand to touch his face. "Burning up. What are you doing out?"
"This is all unofficial. I'm supposed to be home."
"What have they given you?"
"Meadowsweet _ the usual dose. Marsh fever's an occupational hazard."
"I have maybe something better," she said, tipping her head and studying him intently. "Depending on what you want."
He attempted to explain, aware as he spoke of muddling the chronology and jumbling the facts. "I can't understand it," he said. "I can't understand what's happened to her. I wanted to talk to someone who knows how it feels."
She sniffed and cleared her throat, but after a slight hesitation, invited him inside. "Before you fall over," she said.
The apartment seemed both larger and darker than usual. He must have commented on that, because she said, "Effect of fever. Sit down."
He did. The old woman went into the kitchen where he heard her rattling in a cupboard. Then she returned with a water glass and two white tablets, that Edward recognized as Aspirin. "The real thing," she said, "the ancient recipe."
He swallowed them gratefully. Later, his mental processes released from fever, he realized this meant connections with the Resurrectors or maybe with the Highlands. At the time, he sat mindlessly in the dim apartment and waited for whatever she might be able to tell him.
"I am Diorina's grandmother," she said. "Jessie Ashansa. But I'm not officially here."
"Like me. We're both not officially here," Edward said, nodding his head for emphasis. "I've never seen you." He could hardly say otherwise after the gift of the Aspirin. 
"Normally, I wouldn't have answered the door _ bad policy. You only open your door to trouble." Edward had to agree. By rights, Jessie Ashansa should be safe in an ElderHome in the Highlands. "But Diorina's been gone over two weeks. I don't walk very well; I don't see well at night." She didn't need to add that she was much more likely to be spotted by some Authority during the day.
Edward nodded again. The old woman, who seemed to his eyes quite spry, hopped up and went into the kitchen again. This time she came back with a bowl of clear soup. "Drink this," she said.
"Are you sure? You are perhaps running short_"
"We'll talk about that later. Drink, drink. Good for fever."
She watched him, her great glasses magnifying her eyes, and Edward veered toward fantasy, toward soundless wings flapping, toward a tiny, ancient woman rising soft as an owl and soaring overhead, before he returned, helped by the combined effect of Asprin and liquid and the remembrance that he was there for a reason.
"You must miss Diorina," he said.
She tilted her head. "She was as much trouble as all three of my children combined. But yes, and I'm getting hungry."
"Would you like me to bring you some food?"
 "I need someone to shop for me. Twice a week. Twice would be enough. I can pay," she added quickly.
 "I'll go as soon as we talk."
"But perhaps you'll forget." She gave him a sharp look. "Perhaps you'll find me a troublesome old woman and report me."
Though Edward denied this, there was no getting around Jessie Ashansa. He had to make his way to the market, still shivering and shaking, for smoked fish and a large bag of vegetables.
"There's a good boy," she said, when she opened the door. She counted out the money for him and gestured for him to sit at the table. "What do you want to know?"
Edward propped his fever-weighted head in his hands. "How did it happen? What causes Absences? You may have known a few_" He didn't like to add "at your age," but just statistically, she must have.
"They say Melankol _ was your friend sick?"
"Not too seriously, but yes, a touch." Then he shook his head. "More than that. But up and down. She kept giving me hope."
"Disappointed hope is worse than despair."
With those few words, Edward knew that they had visited the same place and nodded.
"My Diorina was good one day and hardly out of bed the other. That was the first period. And then, she seemed better, but she was too "up", too easily excited. And then she was gone. She left me a week's vegetables. She did do that; but not enough fish."
"Could she have known _" In spite of his fever, Edward sensed this was important and he watched the old woman's magnified eyes swimming like minnows in her thick glasses.
"I've asked myself that." Her face seemed to sink into itself, and Edward was momentarily afraid she might start to cry.  "I think she might have. She might have made some sort of decision. The way suicides do. The ones who are so sad and then seem calm and happy. They've made up their minds."
"Of course, people know about Absence as a possibility," Edward said. "But not how it works."
"I knew a Return once," the old lady said, and her face became reflective.
"What did she say?"
"He. He wasn't particularly informative. He might have been away on a trip, perhaps one where he'd gotten up to things he regretted and didn't want to talk about. Mostly, he said he didn't remember." She shrugged. "I doubted that, you know. It caused trouble between us. But now _ now at my age, I understand. A lot of our life is habitual; we can operate quite well with greatly reduced memory. You'd be surprised."
"Do you suppose that's what they want _ less memory?"
Jessie sat as if she was thinking this over. "It's possible. But a good whack on the head might do the same thing and be less inconvenient for everyone."
"But the man you knew _ did he ever say where he had gone?"
"Didn't need to; I knew where he'd gone. I know where Diorina's gotten to and your _ what was her name?"
"Kara."
"Your Kara, too."
Edward was astonished, as much at her assurance as by her words. "Where? What do you mean?" 
"Look, think about it. If they really aren't Disappeared, I mean moved or placed somewhere else in space _ run off to the Highlands or kidnapped to the new islands or buried in the marsh _ aren't those the possibilities?"
Edward agreed they were.
"Well, then, it's time, isn't it?"
Slowed by fever and the exhaustion of his brief shopping trip, Edward had difficulty understanding.
"The space-time continuum. If they are not displaced in space, it must be in time. Basic."
"Such displacement isn't possible."
"Nonsense. Think of string theory that posits reality wound like a ball of vibrating yarn. You've got the multitude of indefinite particles, quantum universes, a tangle of possibilities."
Edward did not conceal his surprise.
"Just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm stupid."
"But where?"
"That's space, but where else but here? Hartford. But earlier. Pre-Rising I would guess. Otherwise why go? Why be tempted?"
Why, indeed, thought Edward, who wanted to know more about the Return. Was he her Committed? Diorina's grandfather? Was there a genetic connection, but the old woman said only that they'd talk next time he brought her shopping. 
"I don't want to lose my fascination," she joked at the door, leaving Edward to stagger down the steps and back to his apartment. 

She greeted him warmly the next time. He'd found some green onions and some lettuce she particularly favored. 
"I'm a little worried," he said as he watched her putting the produce into baskets. "I mean that someone will notice."
"Schrodinger's cat," she said. "A lot's both known and not known. My neighbors want to be able to say they don't know. Some are quite kind, but they've already done their part. I've lived here illegal for twenty-five years." She raised her chin so defiantly that Edward smiled.
"Besides, you might be visiting anyone. Anyone at all. There are two single women _ Tullia and Ank. Try to meet them. Then if you are asked, you are visiting them. One or both." She laughed when she saw his face. "Diorina used to say I was terrible."
"Have we become so dull and cautious?"
"Oh, everything changed with the last Rising. Wild, wild, then the reaction. Equal and opposite, thank you old Newton."
That was the third reference to physics and Edward asked her what her work had been.
"I was ScienceSide, too _ an Historical Physicist. Probably you hardly know what that is?"
He shook his head.
"We study past science and try to construct a picture of  Science Side as it was pre-Rising _ with the thought of rebuilding the networks and conditions necessary for new work. Historical physicists delve into the archeology of Science _ I suppose now we should say the hydrology of." She gave a sharp glance at Edward to see if he appreciated this little joke. 
"I hadn't realized," he said. His own science schooling had been narrowly functional.
"Well, you do know they tried to save as many books and records as possible at the time of the earliest Risings?"
Like everyone else, Edward had memorized snatches of the Rising Epics in his schooldays, but he'd retained only a few vivid scenes: the great set piece in Kataclysm of the First Great Evacuation when Naomi swam between the towers with her hair burning, and Peter Collin's heroic work with the boats in WaterDown, crying, pull now, pull now, pull now for safety to encourage the rowers. Joking, he and his friends used to yell that out on the river. "But hadn't most material gone Digital pre-Rising?"
"Biggest mistake ever. The idea was good. Like a Komunikator with a world wide range, apparently. Wonderful. A researcher's dream. But it ran on Electric, and when the grids were disrupted, material was lost, corrupted, fragmented. And with so many of the great print libraries being near the ocean _" She broke off, looking distraught. "I've actually held some of the journals with the great publications," she said. "Pages yellow, crumbling. I found one with Planck's article on black body radiation. I'll never forget the shock and joy of  its survival." 
Edward had known very few old people _ his grandparents were nowhere near this ancient _ but even they, it seemed to him now, had experienced a lingering nostalgia for books and paper, though both had been almost extinct for a century since the advent of the  cheap, cranked Komunikator.
"We are so much better prepared and adapted."  As he spoke, he couldn't help thinking of the recent miniscule, but steady, increases in the water levels.
 Jessie looked unconvinced. "The scientists of the time started right away to rebuild," she said. "We know they did. They knew how easily knowledge can be lost so they collected all they could."
"Like the Museum of Lost Technology."
"Ours is a poor thing _ just tools and transport. There are some wonderful things in the Highlands. Much, much was saved _ more than anyone knows." Her wrinkled face revealed a wistful longing, and Edward wondered what had drawn her to the CC and away from what she'd obviously loved.
"Yet how much we've lost."
"Exactly. Saving the books, the data, the algorithms, even, wasn't enough. Perhaps they didn't fully realize that. Perhaps they did and left what they could for us to reconstruct, but once the context was gone, the ideas withered. They lost the laboratories with their cloud chambers and cyclotrons all needing Electric; and the great institutes and research facilities and universities; and worse, the concentrations of clever, passionate people, the theoreticians and graduate students and trained technicians, everyone drawn away to stem the crisis of the moment. Then the journals folded and the money to pay for everything ran out and, of course, their Digital and enough Electric to power it. Eventually, I think the desire for  pure science just went. That was maybe the key thing and there weren't enough of us, not even in the historical branch, to keep things going. Now it's all just hydrology and water management."
"The essentials," said Edward, who felt she was rather slighting his profession.
"No argument there. And better than the Water Priests and Super. Yet the remaining fragments are so beautiful and suggestive. The "graininess" of reality with that wonderful Planck Number, the predicted inter-relation of energy and matter; the uncertainties, the known uncertainties _ think of that!_ of tiny particles. And the wonders of special Relativity, so appropriate for your current situation, Edward, and the dreams of a Master Theory. Oh, they had big dreams, big dreams! Big visions! The universe in constant motion, our bodies a net of vibrations or particles or both; uncertainty creating multiplicity creating freedom within determinism, and matter creating energy creating mind. And now we worry about water pressure and coastal gradients and the health of our swamp."
She slumped back in her chair, exhausted by her brief exultation. It took several more visits before Edward could bring her to talk about her Committed and what he'd said and how he'd gone absent. Then one wet day he came late after a long slog at work. He left his marsh boots just inside the door and sat down wearily at the table. Perhaps there was something reminiscent in Edward's posture or perhaps Jessie was simply in a talkative mood, for after they'd eaten, in silence, like old friends who have said all they have to say, she started to talk unprompted about Frank.
"He was ScienceSide, too. Another Historical; there really wasn't any other choice. We'd lost confidence by then, you see. To create something new _ I don't think the area matters _ physics, music, a better bread_ you have to have confidence. And see the need. We'd lost that. Or maybe too much time had passed. Maybe we Historicals were the fault." She shook her head sadly, and it struck Edward that while her regrets for Diorina were of a practical nature, physics was her real passion.
"How could that be?"
"We'd spent too long on preservation, on other people's work, on excavation in the ruined libraries, with the disks and data ports and experiments with the Komunikators. From my researches, I came to understand that we had a different turn of mind from our great predecessors and even from the earlier ScienceSide people like you and me, with no claims to genius or even eminence."
"Maybe your work was necessary, though," Edward suggested. "Our new generation techniques for Electric and the invention of the Komunikator _ though no rival to the great Digital _ have been huge."
"Indeed. But having beheld theories of genius, even fragments of those great cathedrals of theory _" She stopped and Edward feared that she might be swept away again in her enthusiasm for the old science. But this time, she shook her head. "It troubled me," she said, "and it troubled Frank worse. He began to think," and here she dropped her voice and leaned across the table, "to think we must destroy the past in order to make fresh progress."
Edward thought about the Water Priests, who were all for washing clean, and draining away. And leaving theirs the only voice.
"You can see the danger," she added.
"Yes, I can. But was he right in some way? Do you think he was?"
"I thought we had to leave history for science again. And then come back to the great ideas when we had a context for them. Frank, Frank grew depressed and thought to burn the Historical Physicists' Archive."
Shocked, Edward straightened up in his chair.
"You must understand he was a good man. A thoughtful man."
"Yes, but the Archives!"
"I volunteered us for Hartford. Early days then. They were just starting to convert the drainage fields back to marsh. They needed engineers for the dike. Frank had always been more on the technical side than I was. It saved his life _ and the Archive."
"But he became Absent?"
A shadow passed over her face. "Yes. Once the crisis passed and engineers and technicians weren't working half the night. We had no generators _ they burned bundles of reeds _ and then, I might as well say it,  he contracted Melankol, or, more accurately, I suppose, he had a  recurrence. He wanted to go back to the Highlands. To the Archive. Well, you can guess what he had in mind."
"Would he have done such a thing?"
Jessie shrugged. "I couldn't risk it. I insisted we stay here, though it was hard with the children." She compressed her lips and looked away fro a moment. Underneath the wrinkles and the sunken face, Edward glimpsed a powerful will. "I sacrificed him for the Archive. Even though I had doubts myself." 
She was silent for a moment and when that moment lengthened, Edward asked, "Do you know how he left? Can you tell me that?"
"He went out for a walk. I remember clearly. It was in the morning. The children were at school. I worked doing cataloguing at home because of the three little ones. We lived near the Raised Road which was just in the construction stages, although the Rail was up. Coal powered cars, filthy things, totally primitive, but we needed workers and material for the first turbines. He wanted to go for a walk _ no one did that, you understand, not with the fumes and coal dust and the clouds from the construction. But Frank walked often, always the same way, out to see the road. I think pledge or no pledge, he had plans to get back to the Highlands, to the Archive." She stopped. "I remember that it was a nice morning. No fog, a bright sky. Just before he left, I said to him, 'It's not so bad'. Meaning life in the CC, along the river, building the Electric for the future. He didn't answer me and then he was gone." 
"How long?"
"Couple months, more, six months actually. Then he walked in one day, a bit confused and remote. He was glad enough to see the children if not really enthusiastic. He took longer with me. I had a temper in those days and he was one of the early Absences." 
"What excuse did he give you?"
"He said that he'd been away. But we knew he hadn't the means to leave the CC. I thought another woman, I really did, but it wasn't that. It was this new thing, Absence."
Edward started to ask something more, but she held up her hand. "That's all I know. There are Returns about. See if you can get any more from one of them than I did from Frank."




















Six

After his conversations with Jessie, Edward began investigating Returns. He went as far back in the Komunikator archive as he could go and even prevailed upon Harris to give him a few names. But though he followed up each possibility with admirable persistence, he had no better luck than Jessie Ashansa. Many of the Returns had departed from the CC, not always to better destinations; the rest refused to meet him, and one woman, surprised out on the street, began to scream as soon as he broached the topic. He got a stiff warning from Harris after that. 
Just the same, Edward spent hours when he should have been patrolling the marsh hidden in a clump of reeds or beached in some out of the way cove searching his Komunikator or obsessively mulling the few scraps of information he possessed. His work got so sloppy that Jimb threatened to report him to the Head Warden _ and Edward had the sense that his whole life was in storm surge, running beyond control. He couldn't work, he couldn't play, he couldn't visit, he couldn't sleep, he couldn't concentrate. Even the marsh, though infinitely better than life within the walls, did not bring him its usual peace and calm. He took to appropriating bottles of Swamp Magic from the Evidence Store and hiding them in the old Fisher's hut as insurance against his bad days. 
It was on one of these days, that Edward decided to leave the solar at the outer dock and so avoid the Station when he'd been drinking. As he walked across to the emergency stair up the dike, the cold smell of river and mud mingled with the smoke of the city to increase his melancholy. The sun was already down, turning the pale golden grasses a murky purplish brown and leaving a fast fading rose and crimson smudge over the western hills. With the slimy, pebble strewn strip along the wall deep in shade, Edward was unnervingly close to the motionless figure before he realized that someone was standing below the dike. "Hello," he said, startled. You rarely met anyone except Resurrectors, a few swamp rats, and distillers on the marsh, and none of them so close to the city.
The man, he could see now the figure was male, did not answer.
"Edward Nempf, Marsh-Keeper." He hoped the stranger would not detect the Swamp Magic fumes.
No response.
Edward stepped close enough to see that the man seemed stunned. He was quite young, no older than Edward, himself, and, had he not seemed almost catatonic, quite handsome and healthy, even stout, with a mass of wavy black hair and a large straight nose. But when Edward reached out and touched him, a tremor ran all though the stranger's body. "Have you been hurt? Attacked? Has someone frightened you?"
After a long moment, the man shook his head.  
"It'll be full dark in a few minutes. The stairs are tricky. You're not safe here at night." Edward touched the man's shoulder again to rouse him, because it would be far better to get him up the dike and safely into the city than to take him to the Marsh Station, where Jimb, who had sharp eyes and a sensitive nose, would soon figure out how Edward had spent the afternoon.
Then the man said something in a strange tight voice that gave Edward a chill despite his subtly altered state. "Where am I? I'm not on Elm Street. I'm not, am I?" 
 "You're in the South Marsh, right at the CC dike. No place for you at this time of night." The terror in the man's voice provoked an attempt to be reassuring, even jovial. "Just up the stair. You'll manage, but we have to get moving. Once it's dark _"
"I'm in the CC?"
"And I'm the Marsh-Keeper for this section." Edward could not help adding to himself, for the moment.
"Marsh-Keeper? Marsh-Keeper?" He suddenly seized Edward's arm with a powerful grip. "Show me," he cried, "Show me."
Edward pulled away and held up the chain with his badge affixed. "Don't touch me," he said, but the man extended a curious finger and traced the lines on the badge so that, for a moment, Edward wondered if he were blind, if he'd somehow been abandoned on the marsh.
"It's true," he said then. "And late in the year. It's late in the year, isn't it?"
"Mid-December."
The man's legs collapsed under him and he sank onto the damp ground.
"Hey," said Edward. "You're in worse shape than me." That's what he'd emphasize if he had to take the man in. He'd say the alcohol odor came from the stranger. Not the best plan, but maybe the only one, because he wasn't going to get the stranger up the steps in this condition. "Hey! Are you hurt? Have you been injured?"
There was no response. Worried, Edward knelt down on the damp ground and put his hand on the man's chest. Even in the gray light, he noticed that the stranger was oddly dressed in a padded, almost inflated, jacket with a hairy garment underneath, both way too warm for even chilly days in the CC. The man's heart was beating rapidly and his breathing was quick and shallow. "You're over-heated," Edward said. "What are you wearing all this stuff for?" 
The unfamiliar closures came apart with a pop. Edward pulled the jacket off the man's arms and folded it up under his head. "That better?" he asked.
The man looked up at the sky overhead, and his breathing slowed as if he had been reassured by the emerging blanket of stars. "I'm here," he said. "I'm back."
And then Edward knew for sure what he had already half anticipated: this was a Return. 
 "Where have you been?" He heard the quaver in his voice despite his effort to sound calm and unconcerned. After so much searching, so many dead ends, he had a chance to find what he sought right in the marsh. "Where?" he asked again, and this time he could not restrain himself from giving the prone and sweating figure a shake.
The man looked at him with mild, troubled eyes. "Elm Street. On an errand. To Elm Street." He raised his head and looked around at the tall reeds in the darkening marsh. Dampness was already seeping into his strange jacket and wetting his hairy shirt. 
"Sit up. You're getting soaked." Edward pulled the man upright. "There is no Elm Street here. We haven't had elms for hundreds of years."
The man's eyes were white and terrified. "I left the paper," he said. "By the loading dock. I walked from the loading dock to Broad Street to Capitol. A nice day but cold, cold. Wind, blowing snow." He studied Edward's face in wonder. "I was there," he said. "I was there." He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a piece of greenish paper intricately printed. Edward held it up to the last glimmer in the west. He recognized this from pictures: old technology money.
"Where did you get this?" 
"My pay." He gazed at the marsh again and twisted his head to check the dike, looming black over the little stretch of rock and sand. "Don't suppose I can use it now."
Edward rubbed the bill between his fingers, believing and not believing at the same time. His head hurt with the effort of trying to decide. "How did you get there?" he demanded. 
The man looked confused. "Bus. I must have taken the bus. Bus to Capitol and Broad. Or Jimmy gave me a lift to the loading dock. We start by midnight at the dock, getting the paper out. Early edition goes at _."
"Fool!" Edward cried exasperated by this inane talk of editions and papers. "I mean there, wherever you've been. And how did you wind up on the marsh tonight?"
"I don't know. I don't remember. I was on _ I was on _"
He seemed to be forgetting even as he spoke, and Edward broke in impatiently. "Elm Street. You said Elm Street."
"In the snow," the man said. "White and blowing."
"But getting there in the first place? When you went Absent?"
"Absent?" The man lay back down as if this was a new concept. "I wasn't absent. I was at the loading dock. I punched in right on time."
"What is your name?" Edward opened his Komunikator and turned the handle furiously. "What is your name?"
"Alek. Alek Sovino."
Edward moved the dial so rapidly that the names in the Absence list became a greenish blur. Then he saw it. Sovino, Alek. "Look, here you are! Sovino, Alek. Absence. Absent since May. You've been gone seven months. Where have you been?"
"Loading dock. Broad and Capitol. I was on _" He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. "I'm on the marsh, right? Which side?"
"South side." 
"That'd be at Dike and Britan, right?"
"Pretty near. But how did you get here and how did you leave?"
The man looked around at the marsh without answering.
"Where were you when you left? When you left the CC in May? You must remember that. Where were you?" In his agitation, Edward grabbed Alek's shoulder. "Tell me."
Alek made no response. "You've got to tell me. You know damn well how you did it," Edward shouted. Mad with frustration, he began shaking him.  Alek's head snapped violently back and forth, but Edward didn't stop until someone shouted from the top of the dike. His heart thumped in rage and panic, but he didn't release Alek. He couldn't; he had to know, he just had to know. Above, a man was silhouetted against the faint lights of the city. "Who's there?" 
This time, the voice, vaguely familiar and full of Authority, drew Edward from some interior edge.
He sat back on his heels and called, "We have a Return." 
The figure hustled onto the stair with the ring of boots on stone; a moment later Harris crossed the little strip of wasteland. He laid a hand on Edward's shoulder. "Leave him alone now."
 "He's a Return. He knows how it's done. He hasn't told me but he will." Edward seized Alek again. "He must."
"That's enough. You know they really don't remember. And," Harris added, "it's not your duty to question him."
"My Kara's gone and he knows the way, I'm sure he does. Where is she?" he demanded to the cringing figure on the ground. "Have you seen her? Tell me, tell me!"
Harris hauled Edward back. "Leave him alone. You'll only make him worse. And you, you've been drinking. Turn up like this at the Marsh Station and you'll be out of work."
"I don't care. It's driving me crazy. And he knows. He really knows." Desperate, Edward tried to lunge at Alek again, but Harris struck him hard in the center of his chest, knocking him onto the muddy ground, where the rocks and pebbles bruised his hands and his hip. His breath came like a bellows and for a  moment, the star sprinkled night, Harris's dark form, the steep curve of the dike, the sprawled figure of the Return all melded into one swirling mass, a mass he might attack, shatter, resolve into answers. Then he sat up. He was dizzy and embarrassed and even a little frightened to think what might have happened if Harris had not showed up when he did. Edward scrambled to his feet and brushed off his pants. "We should get him up the stairs. I couldn't manage him alone," he said, as if nothing untoward had happened, as if he was returning sober and dutiful from the marsh and behaving impeccably. 
"Right," said Harris. "We'll take him straight to the SafetyPoint and see if there's a Committed or relatives. It's not good for Returns to be alone." He took one of Alek's arms and Edward took the other. They moved up the steep and narrow stair one step at a time, Edward, clinging to the rail and Harris with one hand against the stonework for balance. Alek seemed to have lapsed into a semi-conscious state and Edward was frightened that, in his frenzy, he might have hurt him, but Harris shook his head.
"They're kind of stunned. That's why he couldn't tell you anything. Good thing you spotted him," he added kindly. "Out on the marsh alone at night _ he could have wandered off or done something fatal. It's the shock."
At the SafetyPoint, Harris said he could manage alone. "I can get your statement tomorrow; there's no need for you to be involved tonight."
This represented a serious favor and though Edward wanted to be at the proceedings, whatever they might be, he realized that he couldn't risk it when he was still a little drunk. 
He touched Harris' shoulder. "Thanks. It's the uncertainty. It's not knowing. And when he was right there, so close..."
Harris nodded. "Absence is worse than Disappearance," he said, then turned and opened the door for Alek Sovino. It was only a day later, checking his Komunikator out on the marsh, that Edward found what he had so much wanted to know: Alek Sovino, Return, had disappeared from the vicinity of the Raised Road at some time on the morning of May 4th. 
The Road again! It had to be some echo of the old east-west, north-south alignment of the Inter that had been destroyed, totally, in the First Rising. What else was there? The famous monuments, even the capitol dome, were all gone; only the roads remained, and they were mere tracings in the soil, unless the Raised Road had resurrected a part of the lost Infra. The WaterPriests had been against its construction and a few fringe clerics felt it was blasphemous to this day, a challenge to the power of the river, a provocation to water. Nonsense, purest nonsense, yet Edward felt a feverish certainty that the road was the way, that there were hidden connections, psychic and geographic, that there was some door between consciousness and time, between him and Kara. There was; he knew it; he had only to find it. What time had Alek Sovino vanished? Some time on the morning of May 4th. Morning, then too late today, though Kara had disappeared in the afternoon and others even later. But the Raised Road for sure. There were too many Absences in the vicinity of for it to be a coincidence. Maybe he wasn't even too late today. He could leave the marsh at his usual time and head out. Or now, he'd just go, because if he became Absent, it hardly mattered whether he finished his shift or not. Resolved to this, he turned the canoe and started for the station, but he hadn't been paddling for more than ten minutes before his Komunikator crackled with an assistance alarm; he saw the call was from Jonas, but he didn't immediately touch the button to listen. Instead, Edward took a breath and sat with his paddle shipped. He told himself that Jonas was as good on the marsh as anyone, that there was nothing that he couldn't handle, that this was the moment on the Raised Road to find Kara.
 And then Edward remembered the thousand dangers of the marsh, the snakes, the ruins, the forest of snags and rocks and debris of all sorts, the Resurrectors and Distillers, some violent. Edward knew that a bad wound on these waters meant sure infection, meant death, and he closed his eyes and ground his teeth and thought of Absence. Then he punched the button on the Komunikator and identified himself.
Instantly, Jonas's voice in his ear, tense and relieved at once. "Edward! Am I glad it's you." He gave his position. "How far away?"
Edward figured fifteen minutes.
"I've got that," Jonas said, "I'm in a hole." 
Edward dug in with his paddle and set off strongly. Holes were a common but dangerous problem. Despite two generations of work,  the newer areas of the marsh were still full of wreckage; one of the Keepers' jobs was mapping the ruins, checking them for salvage, and clearing the surrounding waters of the almost inevitable metal shards and piping and beams that could hole a canoe or open a leg. Though they were not supposed to go "on ruin" alone, in practice everyone did, and if they hadn't, shorthanded as they were, the marsh maps would never have approached completeness. Such efficiency came at a cost, for occasionally rotted or unstable wreckage sent an unfortunate Keeper into the darkness of a flooded basement pit. Edward had gone down once, himself. He'd been exploring a big concrete slab with a metal superstructure. The lower level appeared sound enough, and he had clambered onto it to make a survey of the surviving girders. He'd been near what looked like a flooded stairwell when part of the floor gave way under his feet, the cement crumbling like dried mud, the old rebar tearing. He had fallen into a quicksand-like mess of watery mud, and he'd only missed drowning, because an old stair rail held so that he could drag himself out. Remembering the sudden horror of the murk and slime, and the brilliant, mocking sky glimpsed though a mesh of rusty metal, Edward drove the canoe forward with all his strength. 
When he thought he was in the right area of the quadrant, he checked Jonas's position again, then turned the canoe north into one of the little waterways. He found the bright red solar first, tied to a scrubby tree beside an eroded fragment of a low but massive cement wall _ how was it he had not seen this before? There appeared to be no window openings, just the wall, though as he moved along the structure, Edward noticed what seemed to be the remains of concrete struts, like the relics of some long gone, faceted ceiling, not a dome, exactly, but perhaps some sort of sky window. He shouted, listened, then beached the canoe. He slung a length of rope over his shoulder and stepped onto the muddy ground. Behind him, the enormous dike was a child's toy in the distance and storm clouds were gathering over the Bolton High Ground. If there was a storm, the Raised Road might be out. He might miss Kara; he might miss his chance. He shouted angrily, listened again, and this time heard, faint and well into the ruins, the sound of his friend's voice. 
"Hang on, I'm coming. Keep calling."
The sound seemed to be coming from his left. The quickest way would be to scale the wall, but he suspected that was how Jonas, impatient by nature and skeptical of procedure, had approached the ruin. Instead, Edward started around the structure, probably an office building or an apartment block, constructed on a monstrous scale. It appeared to have been inadequately footed; when the water rose, the foundation pilings sank and the building had tipped like a ship going under. At the corner of the structure, a sloping floor rose at a shallow angle. The opposite wall was so distant, it was lost in the shadows without any breaks or openings that he could see. As he splashed on through the puddles and across sodden mud flats that would soon be under water, Edward hoped Jonas was not trapped under something. Wardens had drowned in holes with rising tides.
"Jonas!"
"I'm here."
Edward scanned a stretch of tumbled rust-stained wall, already topped with weeds and grasses. Even a small shrub had found purchase in the decaying concrete, but no open pit, no mess of girders.
"Where are you?"
"Here! Here!"
The sound was so close to his feet that Edward started. Then he saw a triangular darkness at ground level, a sort of crawl space behind a jumble of wild olive and swamp alder. "Are you caught?"
"Naw. I need a rope, though."
Edward pushed through the branches, regretting he had not brought his machete with him. "Hold on, I have to find something for an anchor."
"Not yet," said Jonas. "Something to come up first. Just let down one end of that rope." A rustling in the darkness followed. "Give it a pull." 
Edward tugged. Something powerfully heavy was on the other end, and it took several minutes of struggling, before the top of a wooden box appeared in the opening. "Just ease it out," Jonas called. I'll help you with it when I get up."
Edward did not need to ask what it was: contraband for sure, and from the gentle tinkling and clicking, a cache of Swamp Magic. 
"How much more?"
"Five, six crates."
"Your little solar can't carry all that. We'll have to call for the Eight."
"Who says we're taking it all in at once?"
This was quite against regulations, but Jonas persuaded Edward to pull up two more boxes, lighter than the first and quite mysterious, before he called for the rope. With the tide coming in, Edward had a hard time finding anything solid enough to anchor the line and wound up with his butt in the mud and his feet braced against a chunk of cement while Jonas shinned up the rope. Edward stood up, soaked and filthy, as his colleague slid from the gap in the wall. Except for some mud on his marsh boots and dust on his pants, he looked clean and tidy.
"You didn't fall in," Edward said.
Jonas was unperturbed. "I could hardly call for assistance otherwise. And my luck was in _ you were nearby." He smiled. "Don't be so stiff. I would have had a hell of a time getting out without the rope." He was vague about what had happened to his and also about what was in the other boxes and what was to become of them.
"Contraband will have to be reported." It was one thing for Jonas to work side deals with the Resurrectors and let off favorite Distillers, Edward felt, and quite another to involve him. 
"We don't want to do that," Jonas said. "You can stash enough Swamp Magic to carry you over bad times from now until High Water."
This was a temptation, but one Edward could not afford. A stray bottle now and again, by chance as it were, made enough trouble. He told Jonas that and went to open one of the boxes with his swamp knife.
"There's something else," said Jonas, stepping over to the box to intercept Edward. "Something you want more." He leaned close and, for the first time, his insouciance and gay indifference to rules took on a sinister tinge. "Absence, right? You want to know how it works. I know. I've seen it happen man."
"Don't try that," Edward said. "You'd have told me before if you knew anything."
"Would I? Then who would I call when I got stuck out on the marsh? You know, you go, right? That's the plan?"
Edward looked away. A line of showers had developed north of the city. He could see gray sheets of rain moving toward them like a curtain that was closing off one set of perceptions and assumptions. Without being exactly frightened, he was keenly aware of the vastness of the marsh, of their present isolation, of the thousands of little sloughs and rivulets, of the hundreds of ruins, of the vast graveyards of roads and apartments and houses and concerns of all kinds that lingered underfoot, or survived, like their present location, as hiding places for all manner of secret things. While he knew very nearly as much as could be known about the flora and fauna of the marsh and its natural geography, Jonas knew as much or more about the human remains and human industry of the place. The Station joked that Jonas always had some scheme going, but liking him, none of them had wanted to take up the idea. One glance at the present set up told Edward this was more than just a matter of extracting a few bottles in exchange for a warning. The Keeper was in deep, and it came to Edward that, in all probability, Jonas hadn't needed help at all _ not even to hoist out the boxes _ but had decided to entangle him in the business for some future leverage. 
"I don't like it," he said. "I don't like what you've done at all."
Jonas ignored this. "My cousin Silvia," he said. "She was Absent for over a year. I saw her go. That gets your attention, doesn't it?" He raised his eyebrows in the sort of quizzical look that had once seemed amusing and now seemed repellant. "We were walking on the Raised Road _"
Edward could not help himself. "Where? Where were you?"
"You'd like to know," said Jonas and waited.
"All right, all right. I didn't see the boxes, I've never seen the boxes. But the call will have been recorded."
"True, rising tide and you hauled me out _ I'm grateful, incidentally. No trouble."
Edward nodded. If he found what he wanted to know, his scruples and caution wouldn't matter anyway.
"Agreed?"
"This is the only time, though, Jonas. The only time."
"Hey _ goes without saying. It was an emergency." 
Edward was skeptical of the charming, boyish smile that had gotten Jonas out of so many scrapes. He was pretty sure that Jonas would hold this over him and have other emergencies. "Tell me where."
"A crossroads, of course. Symbolic of change and decision, moral and physical, topographic and spiritual."
"Tell me!" Edward grabbed his shoulders violently, causing the much taller Jonas to laugh.
"Raised Road and Rail. You may not have realized it, but the Raised Road right there runs due north; the only place on its route through the CC where it's on a north-south line. Fancy that! And Rail there lines up east west. I took time to check later: perfect points of the compass. What would those shifty WaterPriests with their everything is fluid make of that, eh?"
"Never mind the WaterPriests!"
"I'm setting the scene for you. In these matters of atmosphere and alignment, the scene is important. It was early; we were just entering the shadow of the Rail and shafts of light from the morning sun shot between the pylons." His voice changed then, losing the mocking tone and taking on another note. "She was a few steps ahead of me, walking like normal, then she was gone."
"Like that?"
"Like that."
"She hadn't just _"
"Don't you think I didn't consider that?" Jonas asked angrily. "Of course I looked around. I thought she'd slipped behind one of the pylons or down a side street. Nothing. No one. And then she returned." His face was sober. "Don't try it," he said. "She's never been the same. Her care is _ expensive." The implications were left dangling in the air _ the dangers, the costs, even Jonas's schemes.
"It's not your business," said Edward. "And this isn't mine." He turned and walked away, his marsh boots splashing in the deepening water toward the canoe. Jonas called to him twice, but he didn't turn around. He was going to the Raised Road.

 

		          
 Seven
Cold, colder than he'd ever imagined despite the brilliant sky, an intense blue dazzled with low sun; wind whipping dust, no, snow, this was snow, snow and dust, and sound, sound all around him, loud as the Rail, loud as the tide turbines, a deafening tumult pierced by some unknown breed of horn and followed by shouts in an unintelligible, but somehow familiar language, one perhaps half heard and almost forgotten. These angry shouts whipped from what he recognized were motors, green and black like the ones in the Museum of Lost Technologies, and from another thing, big as a dinosaur, nearly as big as a tide turbine, a truck, but a truck monstrously sized, screaming by with a dozen wheels turning at dizzy speed and panting odd, breath choking fumes _ not smoke exactly, but some oily, cloying gas. Edward was trying to remember the smell from the vast catalogue of marsh pollutants, when another horn screamed, this one so close he jumped back against the concrete verge, fell, touched metal _ cold, so cold to the touch _ and hung on: a railing. Gasping, he pulled himself back from a road unlike any road he'd ever been on, filled with giant, jostling motors and trucks moving so fast the shock of air nearly flattened him. He pressed against the rail, thinking to climb over, but when he turned, he discovered that he was high above another road streaming with motors uninterrupted by walkers or carts, just motors and blowing snow and cold. 
	Get down, that's the thing. The railing was set in a few inches from the drop and, to escape the traffic, Edward threw his leg over the barrier and squeezed onto a ledge not more than four or five inches wide, too narrow for his feet. He realized that he could not let go of the railing but must edge down the ramp in the midst of the terrific cold and wind, with giant motors and trucks and shouting men. I'm dreaming, he thought, I'm dreaming. A sudden cold front has dropped the temperature and the wind, howling, has been transformed into these ancient vehicles, and the shouts of the Fishers, going out early to the river, have become these strangely angry cries. The road below is really an illusion, and I could step off and awaken with a jolt in my own bed. He let go of the railing with one hand, pivoted, and swung out over the line of traffic without quite mustering the conviction required to jump. As so often in dreams, a last remaining doubt kept him from soaring away over the rampant vehicles to freedom. He started down, instead, the railing so cold it burned his hands, turning nervous sweat to ice. Down, down, then, finally, no more than five or six feet below, a tiny patch of ground, gray and shiny, with a few lanky shrubs that looked to him like dead sumac. Edward stepped off the ramp, but his feet no sooner touched the ground than they slipped out beneath him on the smooth, slick surface. He landed with a thud and only the presence of the sumac trunks kept him from slithering in front of a truck that screeched in protest. 
He touched the ground curiously _ cold and slick though not really wet: ice. This was ice, dirty with city grit but real and amazing. He scratched it with a fingernail, producing a little curl of snow that sent his heart bumping into an irregular, panicky rhythm and introduced a struggle with before and after. Early morning. It had been early morning when he had gone out looking for elsewhere with the dazzle of morning sun in his eyes. So the road before him was north south just like the Raised Road, where he had been walking in hope and despair, not really believing; then, in an instant, this, whatever this was. But Kara was here, and he had set off in search of her, a search he must pursue. With sudden clarity, Edward stood up, forgetting the ice, and almost fell again. He grabbed a sumac trunk and stood swaying, the ground literally uncertain beneath his feet, but real, this was real. He wasn't dreaming, and after the rush of adrenalin, he was cold, terribly, even dangerously, cold. Fear focused his attention across the stream of traffic to a narrow cement track, a street such as he was familiar with, now dusted white. He would wait until he could get across the line of vehicles and follow that into the city, to shelter. 
		*   *
"Whew, it's cold, man. You just up?" The fellow ahead of him was Old Stock, weathered and wrinkled but pale under the burn of wind and sun, heavily bearded, and not so much dressed as festooned in garments. His lank gray hair was covered with a black knitted hat topped by a dirty red billed cap, and he wore a wide plaid scarf over a brown hooded coat whose many rents and tatters revealed another padded coat beneath. From the stripes of gray, green and blue that appeared at the cuffs and hems, he was protected by a great variety of other garments, as well. He wore high boots like Edward's marsh gear, but thickly padded against the cold. His only vulnerability seemed to be his hands, clad in fingerless gloves, for he kept chaffing them as he spoke.
Standing at the back of the irregular line, Edward smiled uncertainly. Appalled by the motors and puzzled by the half empty walks, he had been drawn to the group without having any idea of who they were or why they were waiting. The large purple doors they faced promised warmth, and he figured that even a small group would help to break the wind. But their speech! He would never have imagined the language so difficult, so different. This man was trying to be friendly; what was it he was saying? Something about the cold.
 "Yes, cold," Edward said and wrapped his arms around himself for emphasis. He was wearing a long shirt and pants _ fortunately it had been cool and he had dressed warmly for the CC_ but here the arctic wind whipping through his lightweight cotton and flax made him shudder. 
"Your lucky day." The man nodded to the line waiting outside what Edward thought might be one of the Old Temples. Almost as soon as he got off the ramp, he had spotted the distinctive spire amidst the thrusting slabs of apartments and offices and had walked toward it as a landmark and a curiosity. In the CC, the WaterPriests had taken over the few such buildings that survived, even though the strictly vertical architecture and the huge fragile windows fit neither their theology nor their situation. "Warm Your Neighbor Day," the man added in a confidential tone when Edward didn't respond. "Parish collects winter coats, boots, everything you need. You should go to the front of the line. You'll get frostbite."
"Frost," Edward repeated. He could feel comprehension coming; the structure was certainly similar, but the words had all undergone a sea change. Or rather, he thought, it was his own language that had been changed by water.
"You guys come up here without realizing the winters will be tough. Huh?"
"I had no idea," Edward admitted. 
"Mexican? Guatemalan? Honduran, maybe?"
Uncertain of the question, Edward tried to smile, but he was so chilled his teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. 
At this, the man grabbed his arm and hustled him to the front of the line, eliciting protests from the half dozen guys nearest the door. 	
"Hey, he doesn't even have a jacket. You want him to go hypo? Where's your Christian charity on Warm Your Neighbor Day?"
"You got enough coats on. Give him one and get yourself a new one," a thin, dark man called.
"Now, Petey, this here's a young fellow. Old guy like me needs warmth first. He needs something a bit sharper. Bit more tailored, see, to get the girls."
The others laughed, defusing the situation, and allowed Edward to be pushed up the steps. 
"Sister Mary Angelica! Sister Mary Angelica!" Edward's bearded friend thumped on the heavy maroon door until, with the clank of a chain and a lock, a short, bustling woman with round gold glasses appeared.
"Nine o'clock. Breakfast at nine; then coat distribution _ Oh," she said looking at Edward. "You have no coat at all. Where is your coat?"
Her voice was higher pitched and harder to understand. 
Edward shook his head, shivering so hard he could scarcely speak. "No coat." 
From her expression of intense exasperation, Edward expected nothing good, but she opened the door further and motioned him in. His bearded friend slipped in behind, slick as an eel despite all his coats and padding.
"You'll wait outside, Joseph. You're not to jump the line."
 "You'll need me to translate, Sister," he said quickly. "He's just up. If we don't get him warm, he'll be gone before the Migra can get him."
She raised her eyebrows, then nodded and led them down a bare wooden corridor. Joseph winked at Edward. "All bark," he whispered. "Heart of gold." He patted his chest for emphasis. 
An open door on their right held long tables set up with plates and he could smell _ was that coffee? Rather a thin, sour smell compared with the voluptuous perfume of the CC's blends. And something sweet. For breakfast! What curious food.
"In here," said Sister Mary Angelica and turned to the left. Another large bare room with folding tables, this one  smelling of mysterious chemicals and with every surface piled with garments. Some were padded, almost inflated looking, in a way he found vaguely familiar. Somehow he knew these were warm, and he moved toward them. 
"These are nice, Sister," Joseph said in a flattering tone. "A very nice selection." He fingered one appreciatively. 
"You'll wait your turn. Now," she said to Edward. "What is your name? Como esta usted?"
Old Spanish, too. He'd barely have recognize it, despite the many Spanish words and constructions in his own tongue. "Edward."
"Eduardo?"
"Edward Nempf."
"Where are you from, Edward?"
He hesitated. He was a visitor from the future, but he could hardly say that. "A visitor," he said as slowly and clearly as he could manage.
"He sounds Bulgarian," Joseph said. "Remember Vlad? Vlad was Bulgarian. He sounds just like Vlad."
"But speaking English," the Sister said.
"Like a Bulgarian," Joseph persisted, and Edward thought it wise to nod his head, although Sister Mary Angelica regarded him skeptically. He realized he had never seen a Bulgarian and had no idea what one might look like. Old Stock like these two, maybe.
He was noticeably shivering, even inside, and the Sister picked up one of the padded coats. "Too small, I think." She selected another one in a dark blue and held it up to his shoulders. "Try this."
"Very good," said Joseph. "Now you want something rainproof to go over that. Down is nice but it gets heavy in rain. We need something rubberized, maybe a poncho, or something in that nice Goretex for over the top."
"You must think we're running LL Bean here," said the Sister, but Edward saw that Joseph amused her. "Perhaps you could look for that and Edward can find some pants."
Somewhere at the front of the building a bell rang, and Sister hurried to open the doors. Cold air rushed in with stamping feet and the smell of long used garments and seldom washed bodies. 
"Breakfast first, gentlemen. Joseph, if you would," she called.
He nodded to Edward. "I says grace. I'll keep it shortish today since you're still looking mighty cold."
At the table, Edward struggled to understand the words, thankful, thanks, our daily, amen. "Thankful," he said to the Sister afterwards, struggling with the old pronunciation. He was dressed in the padded coat under a waterproof poncho and over what Joseph called a sweater and corduroy pants. He had a pair of rubber boots, too, and three pairs of thick socks to make them wearable. "I would have frozen but for your kindness."
She inclined her head, only half understanding him, and ushered them all to the door. Outside, the dingy street was brightened by the faint sun just visible behind a diminishing snow shower. Now well bundled up, Edward found even the bitter wind more tolerable. 
"You got work?" Joseph asked. He was stamping his feet, "getting the blood going," as he phrased it. 
"Yes, of course." Then, realizing there was neither marsh, station, nor dike in the vicinity, Edward shook his head. 
"No room, either, I reckon?" 
"I just arrived," Edward said.
Joseph sighed and rolled his eyes. "I can maybe help. I sometimes help young fellows in need. For, you know, a little contribution." He looked at Edward hopefully. "You got any money?" 
When Edward said he had none, Joseph's expression grew sorrowful, and he glanced upward as if for the assistance of some Super. "Money's the chief thing," he said soberly.
Edward agreed it was, but he was thinking that others had managed. They must have. It wasn't possible that he had landed here alone, that this location was unique to him.
"You missed the morning," Joseph said, starting along the walk with Edward in tow. "Seven's almost too late. And nine-thirty!" He pointed down the road. "See there. By the station. Get there at six-thirty tomorrow. Guys with trucks looking for help. No questions asked and pay cash. Daily. Get your pay daily unless you're on a contract crew."
Edward nodded and tried to look knowledgeable, though he still understood only half of what his new friend was telling him: station, work, early morning. It sounded like his old routine. "What sort  of work?"
"What work? Construction, mostly. Building."
Edward was doubtful. He had already seen that none of the buildings was anything like those of the CC.
"Naw, naw, no real skill needed _ unless you're trained. Laborers are what they want. Fetch and carry and clean up guys. Just watch what you're asked to clean up. Superfund sites, asbestos, stuff like that _ don't touch them!" He went on with a thousand qualifications and cautions. Edward tried several times to ask what he really needed to know _ how to find people, where to sleep_ but Joseph moved at his own pace. It was only after they had reached the big road again _ what Joseph called the I-84 and what Edward realized must be the old Inter _ and found themselves in a plastic tent tucked up behind a support pylon, that Joseph considered the first tutorial complete. By that time, Edward understood that he would be offered for a night cleaning crew, inside work thankfully, for even in his new sweater and coats, he felt a chill. "Dicey, dicey outfit, total exploitation of the poor, but they pay by the night and no questions, no papers_ yeah? That's what you need til you get 'climatized. Where you really from?" Joseph added quickly.
Edward smiled at this stratagem. "Bulgaria," he said, making Joseph laugh.
"No business of mine. Stick with that if they'll believe you. I'll get you there by six. Six's time enough. You sure you haven't any money? Day like this a man needs some internal heating." His small eyes glistened like little blue fires. "No?"
Edward shook his head.
"Then we must needs be gone. Man earns his bread with the sweat of his brow." He pushed through the opening in the tent, ingeniously draped from a hook driven into the pylon, and Edward reluctantly followed. Joseph unchained an openwork metal cart from a post. "We're off on our rounds, my boy. Push this and earn your keep."
The 'rounds' required a long walk through wind and snow, disheartening Edward with a revelation of the city's size and nature. Where were the circles? The bazaar? The river? Everything was closed up tight, as much, he sensed, against prying eyes as against the cold, with blank walls in place of the pylons and circles, and mirrored glass that offered no glimpse of the premises within. How would he ever find Kara here? Where did people meet? The main roads where one would expect to see everyone were jammed with large, swift motors, while the narrow auxiliary streets were often empty except for the drifts of snow that caught the wheels of Joseph's cart. 
But the rounds, themselves, interested Edward despite his confusion. He and Joseph began at the station, exciting with its glimpse of vintage Rail, and walked along the narrow road, the sidewalk Joseph called it, looking for bottles and cans. That done, Edward was instructed to wait beside the cart, while his companion went inside with a plastic bag to scout. When he returned, laden with bottles and the curiously constructed cans, they headed back toward the center city, stopping by each of the big, black metal baskets overflowing with paper, odd plastic items, and wet bits of sauce covered food for the cans and bottles. "What do you do with these?" Edward asked, envisioning some curious craft or construction. 
"Why turn them in for the deposit. See here. You read English?"
"Yes, of course," Edward said. The alphabet was unchanged, though he was finding the many oversized signs cryptic at best.
"Must be Bulgarian English," Joseph suggested.
Edward refused to be drawn. He turned one of the bottles so that he could make out the writing: Deposit CT five cents. "Is that a lot?"
"Naw, we needs volume," Joseph said. "And a route. You got to know the shortest distance between McBurger and trash, between consumption and waste, you got to understand the role of consumer and commuter in turning alimentation to scrap. Some guys got a feel for it; some don't. I do, 'cause I keep my mind on time and motion. Them's the keys to all successful human endeavors. Time and motion." 
When he seemed set to enlarge on this pregnant theme, Edward seized on the one useful idea.  "I need to save some time, Joseph. I need to find someone quickly." 
Joseph took this under consideration. "People in general or someone in particular?" he asked. "Woman as a type or a woman you know?"
Edward looked sideways at him. "A particular person who's here. I believe she's here; I hope she's here."
"She have an apartment, a phone, you look in the phone book. Maybe you go to the library and search the internet. Maybe you ask the Sister _ that is, if this particular person come like you with no work and no money. Check under that seat there." Joseph pointed to the bench in one of the transparent shelters. "I'll do the bin myself."
It took some time for Edward to understand that the internet was the Digital and that the library was a open repository of useful books and papers with personal assistance available. He wanted to go there immediately, but Joseph was horrified a such as a flagrant breach of the principles of time and motion. The library, however, was near a stop on the round and might be easily pointed out for future exploration. "The world of books is a wonderful thing. My own extensive education is a product of that library almost entirely. Only thing is there's no eating in the stacks. Ergo, no cans and bottles." He shook his head regretfully and had Edward steer for a narrow street along a snow choked park. "In nice weather, this is as good as a landfill; today, as you see." Joesph waved a hand toward a sad, half empty can, filled mostly with newspapers. He selected the best of these, folded it with a connoisseur's neatness and placed it in the cart. "For later reading," he said.
*   *   *
	Full dark but the night was bright with light. Orange road lanterns blazed and even the red, green, and yellow crossing signs were a thousand times brighter than the faint building lights Edward remembered; vivid illuminated wall signs featured the giant faces of what Joseph explained were media stars of one sort or another, creatures whose personalities had escaped normal constraints and swelled with recognition to enormous proportions. The motors all were equipped with round, dazzling lights, turning even the unlit streets and roads into white and red streams. And the buildings were extraordinary, lit from top to bottom, floor after floor shining in white and gold. So much light was being radiated that the atmosphere had taken on a pink and orange glow that all but blocked the stars. It was such a spectacle that Edward was surprised at Joseph's alert caution and his wariness of any shadowed space.
	"Dark night; keep your wits about you. Alleys are bad. Mug you for your pocket change. Not that you have any, but worse for you if you don't. Shoot you for nothing, some of them. Don't be a hero and don't be stupid," Joseph muttered, as much to himself as to Edward. Night had affected the older man adversely, or rather, the proceeds of the rounds, being invested in a quart of strong red wine, had altered him for the worse. Nonetheless, he had insisted on going to the pickup spot, confirming Edward's suspicion that a fair bit of his wage might wind up in the older man's pocket. 
	They crossed a spur of the Rail, the railroad tracks, Joseph called them, and reached a cold, windswept parking area, dark enough to unsettle them both. "Be here soon," Joseph said, and sure enough, 5:48 p.m. flashed on a big building sign near them. "That there's the paper, the newspaper we read."
	"That building?"
	"You're looking at the loading dock. The writers and editors and all work up in the front."
	"I knew someone," Edward began and then his heart skipped a beat. He had known someone, someone who _ but he couldn't recover the information. Though the words loading dock had triggered a memory, the detail was lost. Something from the past, from the CC, a memory which, he now realized, was being rapidly erased and over printed by this present with its cold, its lights, its ambiguous dangers. He felt a moment of panic; perhaps the process, the translation, the transport, whatever you wanted to call it, erased memory. Jonas, Harris, Jessie Ashansa, Jimb, Baba, BatWing, Mr. Jonah, he recited to himself, Solar 8, 3.1 meters depth at Hog Creek, the Fisher carrying his silver basin, Wynd, Wynd _ what was his first name, Wynd with the brutal assistant and the dog? Dog had a name, too, but rest in order, Jonas, Jessie, Jessie _ last  name going, gone, Baba, yes, Baba, Kara's best friend, who danced at B _ at B for _ Edward sucked in a gust of cold air: he was forgetting, just like _ who was it? The man on the marsh, the man who had forgotten all that was important _
	"Hey, here they are," said Joseph, suddenly revived, bustling and confident. "Marty, Marty," he called as a pale man, wearing a short jacket over a white garment with a ribbon around the neck, stepped from a boxy vehicle neither motor nor truck. "Got you a good worker." 
	Marty's skin looked grayish but unlined under the sour orange lamps, as if he were a creature of nocturnal habits who rarely saw the sun. He gave Edward an interested glance. "Papers?"
	Edward shook his head.
	"He's Bulgarian," said Joseph. "Speaks an odd kind of English so he's worth a bit more. Do you maybe for a crew chief in a couple weeks."
	"Oh, yeah?" 
	"Good worker, like I told you." 
	"Minimum wage minus expenses." The man said to Edward. "Pick up and drop off here. Six on the dot or forget it. Right?"
	Edward nodded.
	"Get into the van." 
	As Edward approached the back of the vehicle, the door swung open. In the dim interior, two men and three women sat on benches fitted along the sides. They made a little space so Edward could take the last seat before the door slammed. A moment later they started with a jolt, bouncing over the ruts of the parking lot, and accelerating at terrifying speed. Edward clung to the seat with both hands, astonished that his companions, so far from showing any reaction, were either half dozing in the dim light or chatting without the slightest concern. He caught a few words here and there, pelicula, ruby, jennifer, mucho peligro. Old Spanish, he thought, but these were not Old Stock, having brown skin and dark hair like himself. Different though, faces, either broader or narrower, wary and with weary eyes. They'd given him a close, cautious look when he entered, then, as if satisfied, drew back into themselves to snatch a little rest before their shift.
	They got out downtown amidst the tall buildings, where they worked in offices with endless corridors, the sort dangerous for floods. Some had big windows, torrent ready, and ground floors, directly off the street, that were accessed by tall metal doors or, worse, open grills. Had there been only one such vulnerable construction, Edward might have felt compelled to a warning, but by the time they straggled into the third of the night, he could see that the design flaws were omnipresent. And yet the river was nearby. He could sense it, almost smell the water, running dark and swift, just beyond the mass of tall buildings. He'd wondered how they would manage those heights with their heavy buckets, mops, and brushes, not to mention the great mechanical sucker that devoured dust and the even heavier whirler that polished the floors, turning their thin marled coatings as reflective as glass, but Hector, his crew chief, led him to a narrow, windowless room with solid sliding doors. Edward stepped inside, and Hector and Maria followed with the equipment. They pushed a button on the glowing panel. Otis, it read. So this was an Otis. Clang, then a sensation of swift vertical motion that left Edward's stomach below his knees, followed by a dip. The doors slid open and they stepped into an office of enormous size with rows of desks and cubicles that reminded Edward of the bazaar. An image of its orange and red awnings rose and flowered in his mind for an instant before vanishing again before the vast, sealed room. 
	"Hey, Eduardo." Hector had already plugged in the sucker, ready to work. He motioned for Edward to take the tall rolling bin. Ahead of him, Maria was swiftly collecting baskets full of papers. He followed behind her with the bin and a cleaner for the desktops. In his weariness, the smells of cleaners and polishers made him feel light headed, and when, on one of the lower floors, Hector signaled a break, holding up five fingers for the time, Edward went over to one of the floor to ceiling windows and looked out. At last, there was the river, glistening with reflected light on both banks and bound with glowing white bridges, but still dark and deep away from shore. And empty. No barges, no cranes, no shipping, just the water, black against the lights, against the spectacle of the city and the brilliant dots of the motors. The glass was cold against his forehead; there were flakes of snow in the orange tinged air, and, without warning, Edward felt tears born from an uncontrollable wave of sadness, of incipient loss whose precise nature he could not comprehend. There was something he knew, some terrible futurity beyond words.
	Hector said something at the very furthest edge of his perception, then Maria touched his arm. "We are all far from home," she said.
	Edward returned to himself and nodded. He took up the rolling bin and followed Hector to the Otis. The clock over the doors said 11:30. They still had two and a half hours to go, and Edward could scarcely feel his feet, which seemed to have lost contact with his upper body, which, in turn, had only a passing acquaintance with his head, which was filled with dream like images of sun and awnings and dancing figures, images that floated over and penetrated the dark rows of metal desks and black Digital screens and the nests of the wires that fed them and the metal boxes for good paper and the metal baskets for the bad and the recycling bins and closets for more paper and cleaning supplies and toilet tissue for the group sanitaries. 
 This was his introduction to the night shift, where life was on two levels at once and reality bleed out at the edges as the night wore on. By the time he was returned to the pick up lot with Hector and the others,  Edward found the glorious spectacle of the night city tarnished with fatigue. Doubtful that he had enough for a room and disinclined for Joseph's tent, he slept in the Rail station for a few hours, then, too tired to think of day work, he  met up with Joseph again at the Sister's for breakfast. This time he declined the 'rounds'. Much had slipped his memory, but not his search, which, with the vacuum created by the loss of whatever had gone before, now filled his mind: he had to find Kara.

		               





Eight

A terrifying cliff of wave towered over him, the water laden with the shattered remnants of houses, trees, vehicles, all manner of ruined chairs, sofas, tables, plus masses of dirty grayish clothing. Some of the garments were animated, were actually people, he realized, and now more of the debris became animals and people, dead, all corpses, some already swollen, drifting nearer and nearer to him in a sodden, overwhelming pack that sent him screaming into the morning and produced curses from Miguel and Hector. 
	Edward lay on the cot, his chest heaving with fear, his breath half strangled. "Sorry," he said. "Me pesa. Una pesadilla."
	Grumbling without malice, they rolled over in the narrow beds and dropped, exhausted, into sleep again despite the bright sky and a sun strong enough to penetrate even the narrow basement windows. They'd only gotten into the still warm beds at five a.m., when Jesœs, Ernesto, and Tino, who worked day jobs, got up, and the room was filled with the breath of sleeping men and the various exhalations of their bodies and their clothes, both hastily washed and never really clean. Edward judged it to be early, maybe ten, ten-thirty, and knew he should sleep, but when he closed his eyes,  the wave rose again as if it had been implanted on his retina, bringing an intimation of water and flooding and seas of corpses: A Rising. 
How strange that so vivid a dream could be the product of fading news pictures of Hurricane Katrina. He had stumbled on them during one of his many forays to the library, a wonderful institution although maybe not the right place to find Kara. Oh, it had phonebooks and directories and the Digital, which he must remember to call the internet, but none of those produced Kara, who must live an underground life similar to his own. Unless she had lost her craving for sun and light, Edward guessed that she worked by day, probably in some job tending children, so she might be anywhere. The roads led out in every direction, the compact CC replaced by this sprawling beast without division between the river and the Highlands. Still, he believed so strongly that Kara was in this ancient place that he sometimes found it hard to imagine her life separate from his own with a circle of new acquaintances, strangers to him, and a distinct, and perhaps different, experience. Besides, the idea that she could be anywhere else was so profoundly discouraging that he always returned as quickly as possible to the practical details of his search. His latest consideration was a cell phone. If Kara had found work, she might have one of those. But who would she call? Who would he call, for that matter, except her?
	With such thoughts, Edward lay restless for what he judged was another half hour before he got up and retrieved his clothes from the end of the bed. Stepping cautiously around the close placed cots, he opened the door to the unfinished half of a basement dominated by an oil tank, a furnace, and a broken down billiard table littered with their landlord's household rejects.  A narrow corridor amidst this junk led to a dank shower room with a sink and a toilet, all stinking of mildew and worse, where he shaved as best he could without a mirror and washed his face and hands. After the gloomy and congested air of the basement, it was a relief to climb the short flight of steps to the street, where the morning had an almost unnatural clarity with a blue sky so intense it seemed to quiver and sun turned the dingy sidewalks white and the pavement, silver. From deep, deep shadows, every line crisp, emerged garish shop windows full of sales and offers, and noisy motors and delivery trucks panting bluish fumes, but there were few pedestrians except the usual loafers on the corner, a couple truant teenagers up to no good, and a phalanx of short, heavy women with shopping trolleys and restless infants.
 Edward bought coffee and a roll at the 7-11 before setting out to the supermarket for sushi, the closest thing to what he thought of as regular food. Once fortified, he would plan his search route. This was his typical morning program, and he usually enjoyed the long walk to the big market, especially now with spring advancing when there were new things to look at daily. All the older tree species were budding up, the early crocuses out, and daffodils and tulips just visible as green straps and fat exploratory cylinders of leaves.
	But today, despite the brilliant weather, Edward felt uneasy, a subtle echo of his nightmare. The dream was just one of a sequence of disturbed nights that left him with the after taste of memories he could not retrieve. He had retained the images of the hurricane dream only because he recognized the source and identified with the plight of the evacuees, who were, like him, refugees within their own country. 
The difference, of course, was that while they had proper documents but more trauma, he was adapting well so long as he disregarded certain weird psychic states. He'd about mastered Ancient English and his Old Spanish wasn't bad, either. If I only had documents, I'd be set, he thought, for even in this age of libraries and internet, he was knowledgeable about plants and water control and sewerage, and, as far as he could see, there was a clear need for expertise in all three. Papers were not impossible, either, if Maria, Hector, and Miguel were to be believed. All three of them spent many waking hours calculating the costs and making contacts and comparing strategies: how a Green Card might be obtained, where to purchase a false Social Security card, and whether the risk of a phony birth certificate was worthwhile. Maria was especially anguished because her three young children were still in Mexico with their grandmother. She had pictures which she shyly showed the night cleaning crew of small dark haired children with tentative smiles as if, posing on the outskirts of Hermosillo, they could see the far away strangers who admired them. Maria lived to bring them north, and she studied the ramifications of documents like a saint with a testament. 
Edward's priorities were different. While the others came to establish a beach head of opportunity for wife, children, parents, or, like Miguel, to send money home for a little house or farm, he had only to find Kara, and he would know what to do. This belief kept him walking the city streets, making long excursions in every direction, searching for a woman with reddish hair and a dappled face.
Later, he was to wonder at his patience, at the curious state of mind that had planned for no more than the barest survival. Of course, his work was exhausting, physically hard without the exhilaration of life outdoors, but his passivity had its roots in the disjunction between his present and his rapidly vanishing personal history. Time, abused, had swallowed his former life in the CC, leaving him adrift with only his search for Kara as an anchor. Truly a citizen of neither the old nor the new city, he nonetheless survived quite easily until one spring night. 	
The van had just arrived at their last job, Edward's favorite, because the building overlooked the river that he loved and because a couple of nearby buildings raised on pylons brought him an intense, if unfocused nostalgia. The crew stepped out onto the quiet street, the city chilly and virtually empty at near two in the morning, and, just for a second, he thought he heard peepers calling down near the river. Wheezing and self-important, Dave descended to unlock the service door, and Edward and Hector stepped aside to let the others enter before bringing out the heavy equipment. They were standing hidden by the open van doors, when two dark SUV's and a sort of bus with bars across its windows roared up.
"La Migra!" Hector, who was blessed with a quick, decisive mind and a strong sense of self-preservation, bolted into the narrow alley, and without thinking Edward followed. Had he hesitated, one or both would surely have been seen, but as the other workers scattered across the empty, harshly lit street, the darkness of the alley took them in and the agents' excited shouts covered their footsteps, enabling them to gain a collection of  dumpsters. Once squeezed between brick and metal, Edward dared a glance back. 
All he could see was the van blocking the mouth of the alley. Wails of protest came from the street, demands for papers, Dave's voice, furious on his cell phone, and a cry of despair that Edward feared came from Maria. He had an impulse to go back, to try out his Ancient English, to bluff his status, but Hector put his hand on his arm and shook his head. 
"Will they search here?" 
Hector nodded. "Dave will tell." 
That sounded about right to Edward. They watched until the commotion moved further from the head of the alley, then, crouching, Hector edged from behind the dumpster to a sagging metal mesh fence. Reaching as high as he could, he hauled himself up, the mesh creaking under his weight, while Edward watched the head of the alley for the lights and silhouettes that must follow them. Hector swore softly and eloquently, before Edward heard the thump of his landing.
"Andale, andale."
With a last look back, Edward scrambled up the fence. It had lost some of its support ties in Hector's ascent, and, loose from its posts, the wire wobbled and swayed. He got his leg over the top just as a whole section flopped towards the alley, nearly toppling him onto the ground, and he'd have lost his balance if Hector hadn't grabbed his leg. Edward was momentarily stuck, the serrated top of the mesh sawing into his thigh as he struggled to swing his other leg over. Then he dropped beside Hector and they bolted. 
Edward's idea was the darkness of the river_ when in doubt he still moved toward water_ but Hector pointed toward the bright center. 
Edward protested. The stretch of empty parking lots, ringed by old office buildings and small apartment houses, struck him as dangerously open and far too well lit. 
 "No, no, I know a place." Hector dodged along the mottled black shadows of  the street trees and favored alleys where cans and dumpsters provided cover. Confident in his own private geography, he ran remarkably fast despite a cigarette habit and the coordination required to unbutton and discard his SafetyKlean shirt in flight, a ploy Edward copied. Looping away from the river and interstate, they reached a street with small shops and sour orange lights. Hector stopped, panting. Edward bent over, hands on knees, to catch his breath, astonished equally at their near capture and narrow escape. Hector punched his shoulder gently and nodded. "Okay," he said.
Edward had gotten turned around in their flight, but Hector led the way confidently, navigating the maze of short streets around the tall white towers of the hospital and heading toward the night emptied center and the gray shaft of the Travelers with its winking top light. Edward kept looking over his shoulders for black SUV's and sinister buses and perhaps that is why he did not notice the young men loitering outside a boarded up storefront. Hector did, and hesitated, but then it was too late _ they were only yards away. There were four of them, all dressed alike in a curious Old Style, enormous loose pants perched on their hips, baggy oversized shirts, and wide, bulky hoods that half shadowed their faces. They wore heavy pendants and necklaces that glittered under the streetlights, and projected, despite extreme youth, an indefinable air of ill-controlled menace. As one, they pushed themselves off the wall and blocked the path of the sidewalk. 
"Nice night," Edward said, and Hector tried a "Buenas noches."
"What we got here?" asked one of them rudely. His skin was an unmarked light brown and he had black hair and empty black eyes suggesting infinite boredom.
Hector ignored him and made to step past, but one of the strangers grabbed his arm.
"Hey! We don't want any trouble," Edward said. "We're walking home from work."
"No drogas," added Hector and pulled his arm free.
"Work, eh?"
And another said, "Money."
"No dinero."
"Don't fuck with us." Suddenly, like a storm over marshes, the unstable atmosphere turned menacing; a short, stubby gun appeared in a small hand. Edward froze, as one of the boys, broader and more muscular than the others, searched his pockets for a wallet. 
"We didn't get paid tonight," he said, still angry.  He hated being touched by strangers. He would have liked to smack the prying hands away and maybe send him into water, too, but one look at Hector's pale frightened face, warned Edward these boys were serious, were not, despite their youth and jewelry and clownish duds, to be messed with. 
They  ruffled through the wallets, shaking them upside down. The total take, $3.15, seemed to offend them deeply. They began swearing and shouting, as if Edward and Hector had deliberately set out without cash to annoy them, and when Edward extended his hand for his now emptied wallet, one of them struck him in the face. 
He had been frightened, or at least, alarmed, until that moment when his anger at the raid, at the loss of Maria's hopes and Miguel's farm, at their ridiculous flight through his city, his own city, at this final indignity of being robbed by children with a weapon, blew up. He swung his fist into the boy's midsection, cutting his knuckles on a heavy chain, then kicked out with his left foot, catching him on the side of the head. Hector broke free and stumbled behind a parked car as a terrific bang rang in Edward's ears, and then, somewhere close, a siren shrieked. The boys hesitated; Hector shouted, and Edward dove after him as the rear window of the car shattered in an explosion of powdered glass. 
Whirling blue and red lights lit the street and, for an instant, Edward was suspended between before and after, in one of those moments when Hartford became transparent, when he seemed to be in two places at once, when the lights and lots and apartments, even the glittering skyline, darkened into _ what? A marsh, a dike, a wide, tidal river fathoms deep? Reality was dissolving around him, before Hector jerked his arm, and they broke into a heart-thumping sprint to the corner. Shouts and a lethal popping sound inspired them to chance a driveway that proved blocked by a board fence. Careless of the noise, they tumbled over into a narrow yard. The house was a three- family with porches at the back. As they tiptoed up the steps to crouch behind the solid half wall that shielded the lower porch from the yard, a neighbor's dog began to bark frantically. Edward could not think what they would say if someone threw up a window or opened a door. Nervous, he rose to move on, but Hector shook his head and pulled him back down. Police lights swept over the trees and shrubbery. A moment later, a rectangle of light appeared on the grass in front of them, and they heard the sound of a sash rising. Edward closed his eyes and tried not to breathe.
A hoarse, angry voice shouted at the dog, which showed no sign of listening. The sash went down again with a bang and after an interval in which they wondered if the angry resident would venture downstairs, if the door behind them would open, if they would hear footsteps pounding on some unseen stair, the light went out. Edward opened his eyes. In the combination of street and moonlight, he saw that Hector's face was bleeding. His own felt as if it had taken a few bumps, too.
"Who were those people?" His voice pitched barely above a breath.
"Punks, gangbangers. Wannabe Latin Kings, probably."
Finally, the dog fell silent. Hector nodded, and they crept out to the street. A smell of pollen from some blooming tree brought Edward an almost unbearable, but unfocused, longing for lost spring nights, for water and marshes and Kara, all gone but for the memory of that evanescent scent. Hector coughed softly to break the spell, and they turned toward the glow of the center city, following a circuitous route that brought them within a block of the four bright lanes of Main Street. They chose a narrow parallel way, darker and safer, straining their ears for approaching cars and peering down every alley and crossing, until, after much hesitation, they raced across the wide road before the Interstate entrance and darted into the parking garage adjoining a fancy big hotel. 
Edward grabbed his arm. "There's someone in the booth." 
Hector stepped forward, checked out the occupant, then, pointing to a security camera ahead, flattened himself against the wall. After a moment or two he gave a whistle, low but carrying, which roused the night manager, short and plumb with heavy glasses and a great deal of slick black hair. Jorge, one of Hector's many compatriots, recognized a friend. He returned to his cubical for a moment before gesturing that it was safe to approach. A quick conference in very fast Old Spanish ensued: Because of the unlikely possibility that the garage might be visited by the Migra, they had to be sheltered without leaving any record. Jorge considered the camera placements for a moment, before opening the shuttered door of a cleaning closet and motioning them inside. "Leave in the morning through the hotel," he said and closed the door. 
Hector slumped against a trash barrel, his face gray striped in the thin bars of light, and closed his eyes. "Get some sleep," he told Edward. "We won't be able to go back to the room."
Edward leaned against the doorframe, but, with his legs at an awkward angle, he found it hard to sleep although the garage was very quiet. No more than a couple of cars went out, and he heard only a single entrance, a woman in heels who chatted for a moment with Jorge about a delay on the Interstate that had brought her in "at this ungodly hour." A sympathetic laugh from the booth. Her heels clicked on the cement, and some sort of cart rolled noisily toward the door of the hotel. He dozed again and then he had his usual sense of morning, which, formerly triggered by dawn coming in over the marshes, amazingly persisted in the face of so much night light and the absence of morning windows. He nudged Hector, who took out his cell phone. Nearly 7 a.m. In the morning light, Edward saw a wash of blood down his friend's face. At the utility sink, he cleaned the nasty looking wound, which proved to be nothing worse than some small glass cuts and a bad bruise, before scrubbing the spots of blood from Hector's white t-shirt. Edward had a cut lip and torn up knuckles, but they figured that they would not be too conspicuous. After waiting several minutes until the stream of entering cars slowed, they eased open the closet door. 
Edward brushed off his pants and straightened his shoulders. Through the doors to the hotel, onto a vividly carpeted corridor, and out through the main entrance. Easy enough. They were just entering the lobby, bright with marble and chandeliers and floor to ceiling glass, when he heard Hector catch his breath: uniforms ahead. Migra? Edward didn't know, but seizing Hector's arm, he forced himself to speak loudly in his best Ancient English.
"So do you believe FEMA? Kara's still waiting on a trailer. I can't believe it. And they're nowhere near the Ninth Ward. A bunch of goddamn incompetents, I tell you."
Hector nodded but wisely kept his mouth shut.
"I said to her, I said, when you think our tax dollars are going to this. What's it coming to? And you know my situation. How long I'm going to have to wait to get back? How're they going to run the city? You know." 
They reached a strange multipart door. Hector stepped in, showing Edward how the compartment revolved, and he followed. Out on the street he took a deep breath. 
"Keep talking," whispered Hector. 
"I got a buddy," Edward said. "Maybe we can stay with him. But it shouldn't be necessary, wouldn't be, if damn FEMA'd done its job. I tell you."
Halfway down the street Hector broke into a laugh, the gloom and anxiety of the raid, the seizure of their friends, the loss of a week's pay plus their wallets, even their own weariness momentarily forgotten. They would have had breakfast to celebrate, but they were flat broke until Edward happened to put his hand in his back pocket and felt a bill. A twenty. 
"Yo," said Hector. "They missed that. Breakfast after all."
Edward looked at the bill in silence and felt water passing over _ an old phrase suddenly remembered. Where had this come from? His light-weight summer pants, that's where, donned on yesterday's spring morning. So the money came from before, but, in one of many mysteries, it was good, still good, for Hector was already headed for the station cafŽ, debating between an egg muffin or a sausage on roll. Inside, Edward handed him the money, almost unwilling to hold it any longer. "We must save enough for a little something for my friend," he said and sat down heavily at one of the tables.

They slept the morning in Joseph's tent, the old man cheered with the gift of eight dollars and change, and even more so by their account of their narrow escape. "Do they come here? The Migra?" Hector asked. He was noticeably nervous in the semi-transparent plastic shelter.
"Naw. And they better not. I didn't fight for my country to be asked for papers by some damn uniform." Joseph reached into his clothing, still consisting of many, if lighter, layers despite the mild weather and jingled some metal tags on a chain. "Nor papers for my guests, either," he added stoutly. 
Nonetheless, as soon as he waked up again, Hector was on his cell phone, his narrow face as stolid as ever, his voice animated. One of his countrymen ran a restaurant _ they might need a dishwasher or a bus boy_ and another ran a garage. He knew tools. He thought he could secure work for Edward, too, whose Ancient English had facilitated their escape. Hector chuckled every time he thought of that. In the afternoon they set out to see about work, and it was not until the small hours, when Edward was unable to sleep after his new duties in the restaurant, that Joseph was able to ask what he had wanted to know from the very first morning in the shelter line.
"Hector's right," the old man said in a whisper. Edward noticed, not for the first time, that his voice was oddly carrying. Though Joseph barely spoke above a breath, you could always hear him, as if his meaning were carried by some medium more subtle than air. "Your English is perfect now. Like a native's."
"I have a good ear," Edward said. Hector had secured a room over a dubious garage in exchange for night watchman duties. Edward would join him in another night but had felt obliged to return and report to Joseph. Now, lying in the broken darkness under the pylon, he was unsure that had been a good idea. He'd forgotten the dampness, rocks, and grit that underlay the tent and the unwholesome blankets that constituted the bedding. And, of course, Joseph's curiosity. 
"Tell me," the old man said, "where you really from?" Aqueous light from the interstate stanchions filtered through the plastic to glitter in his eyes. 
Edward again felt the characteristic dislocation of before and after. "I'm sort of a visitor." 
"I know that. Of course, you're a visitor. Not meaning to stay, either, right? Not like your friend, who's committed himself body and soul to the old US of A. The question is a visitor from where?"
It might have been the hour or the strangely filtered night lights or just the weight of secrecy, for Edward said, "The future. The future here."
"I knew it! I suspected the first day. I'm getting so I can spot them!"
"Them! You've know others?" Edward sat up in his eagerness.
"Didn't I say so? You didn't think you were the only one, did you?"
"I came to find Kara."
"Well, there you are. They're around. And where do they wind up? Even a man of some education like yourself _ I'm right there?"
Edward nodded.
"You wind up under the overpass and working for companies that grind the faces of the poor. Temporarily, at least. Some do okay; some don't."
"And a few go back," Edward said, though he could not remember the source of his conviction. "A few go back."
"I figure most go back, sooner or later. This sort of visit's not natural, is it?"
"I don't know," said Edward. "What's natural? Maybe whatever happens is natural."
"Oh, a philosopher, I see."
Edward shrugged. "But Kara_ could you have seen her? Reddish hair, lots of freckles, very pretty, a bit depressed."
"That why they come, do you think?"
"I came for Kara. She was _ yes, she was sick."
"Maybe the shock helps them for a while," Joseph said. "Course, who can be sure? Most 'visitors' are kinda closed mouthed about their relationship to present reality. Can't say I blame them. Now you come looking for someone, so you're maybe in a different category."
"I guess, but have you seen Kara?"
"No. Not likely to, either. Women go about things differently, you know that. Young woman like that isn't going to bunk out here."
"I think she'll have gotten a job caring for children. She taught young children back before."
"But if she was depressed maybe she wanted to change her life. If I were you _" there was a rustle as Joseph leaned forward across his insulating pile of trash bags and plastic sheeting, "I'd go look for students. The colleges, the student bars, coffee shops. A pretty woman, not too old, would fit right in with them. That age, there's always room for one more."
"Where?" asked Edward, his mouth dry with hope and fear.
"Why right downtown. They've converted one of the old department stores to student housing. And if not there, try up Zion hill at Trinity. You just have to arrive in the right place at the right time."



			     
















Nine

	Edward had scarcely noticed students during the nocturnal life that ended with the Migra raid, but once he was on the lookout, they appeared omnipresent. Students had rooms in a handsome old brownstone building with heavy arched windows and community college classrooms on the lower floors_ he often saw them passing with their books and groceries, pumping music directly to their ears with little white tubes. On every nice day, they appeared in the park with balls and colorful plastic sailing disks and paraphernalia for sunbathing. At lunch time or between classes, they moved in noisy groups through the center, crowding the grease-hung food shops, and sitting at the sidewalk tables near the Old State House, flirting, laughing, talking on their cell phones. Edward made it a habit to detour along Main Street every day on his way to work, asking likely boys and girls if they knew Kara Wistley _ "pretty, reddish hair, lots of freckles." Interrupted in their conversations _ or occasionally their books _ they shook their heads, and he was beginning to lose faith in Joseph's certainty, when a wide awake looking girl with straight dark hair and large blue eyes, asked, "Freckles? Red hair? I don't know her last name, but there's a Kara at the Gallows."
	"Gallows?" Edward asked with some alarm. The night raid and its aftermath had brought home to him the inhabitants' recklessness and violence.
	"It's a cafŽ up near Trinity College. She's there most afternoons."
	Edward was so excited that work was just a blur. He barely remembered the evening set up or the dinner rush or, indeed, anything before the next afternoon, when, after forcing himself to delay through what he guessed might be a busy lunch hour, he walked up a steep hill past a cemetery to the broad, iron fenced lawns of the college. This was a private outfit, old and expensive; the picturesque buildings were ornamented with spires and turrets, and students in bright colors passed along arched galleries on their way to class. Overhead, a ringing carillon echoed his heart: he was going to Kara. It was her, he knew it was, he knew she would be there, and these baseless certainties set his nerves ajitter with expectation, despite his difficulty locating the cafŽ. Finally, a boy in a team uniform and clattering athletic shoes pointed left down a cross street. Within minutes, Edward spotted the Gallows CafŽ, with Tarot packs, crystals, and books of vegetarian recipes in its bowed windows. Inside, the smell of good coffee, fennel, cinnamon, and garlic drifted over round metal tables and bentwood chairs, a counter with an elaborate coffee machine and glass cases for pastries and cakes, and, just emerging from the back bearing plates of sandwiches, Kara. His Kara.
	Edward let out a cry, lunged to the counter, and put his arms around her. "Kara!"
	Two heavy china sandwich plates clattered onto the marble surface. A tall, powerful man with dark skin and a concerned expression rose from his chair. Kara, startled, put her hands on Edward's shoulders, looked in his eyes with an expression of shock turning to surprise, turning, at last, to recognition. "Edward!"
	"Yes, yes! I'm been looking for you for weeks. Weeks! Everywhere. Library, directories, asking students. And here you are!" Giddy with joy, he bumped into one of  the counter stools.
	"There a problem, Kara?" That was the black Old Stock fellow, very large and rather a heavy presence. 
	"No, no, Austin. Edward's an old friend. From _ home." At her introduction, they shook hands warily. Austin was clearly displeased to meet Edward, who, without eyes for anyone but Kara, found him an irrelevance and a distraction. "Austin is in IT, studying programming and computer systems," Kara said brightly. When the men continued to glower at each other in silence, she mentioned that Edward had worked in resource management.  
	"What time do you get finished?" Edward asked abruptly.
	"Not until six, but work's flexible. We're pretty well done now with lunch. We could sit for a bit." 
She came around the counter as if to join Austin's table, but Edward took her arm. To sit beside the glowering Austin and these other strangers would be unendurable. Even to sit inside was impossible when the sun was shining and he was so full of joy. "Let's walk instead; it's nice out today."
	With the briefest hesitation Kara unfastened her apron and called to someone in the kitchen that she would be back momentarily. Edward held the door for her, and as soon as it closed behind them, he threw his arm around her and kissed her. "I've looked for you such a long time."
	"Was that why _"
	"Of course. I knew you were here," he said. "I came here to find you."
	"Oh, Edward!" She took his arm. "Such a risk. For me." For a moment, tears in her eyes, she seemed overcome, and his hopes soared. He'd had a moment, just the tiniest instant in the cafŽ, when he wondered if she was really happy to see him, if she was the same, if, most awful of all, she had forgotten just what they'd meant to each other. There were gaps and chutes in his consciousness, black holes of understanding. He realized that. But that he could forget Kara _ or that she could forget him_ was impossible. He could see that now, and he almost skipped for joy. 
	"Where are we going? We can't be gone too long." She sounded keyed up and anxious.
	"You said work was flexible." He drew her onto the college lawn and, sheltered by a large pink flowered rhododendron, kissed her again. Memory blossomed in the instant and brought all his body alert. "Where do you live? I share a room above a garage _  impossible at this time of day."
	 "Oh, Edward, I need to get back before I lose my job. Meghan's useless with the sandwiches."
	"The hell with the sandwiches." He drew her into his arms again and things were progressing in an interesting way when she drew away sharply.
	"We're right by a classroom building. All the students know me."
	Edward glanced around. In his present state of mind the distant shrubbery, the cemetery he'd passed, even the shadows of one of the deep arcades merited consideration. 
Kara slipped from his arms. "When are you off work?" 
	"Mornings and early afternoon. I'm free Sunday and Monday."
	"I come in around nine a.m.," she said with what sounded like regret.
	"I'll come for lunch every day. I'll see you then." He took her hand eagerly.
	"Come for dinner Sunday. You can meet my friends. You'll like them."
	Meeting her friends was not at all Edward's priority, but her smile was so sweet and the idea gave her so much pleasure that he arranged his face as best he could and said, "All right. That will be good." 
"Sunday is better than Monday, because Mondays I have rehearsal. But you can come see us," she added when she saw his disappointment.
	"Rehearsal?"
	"I'm in a play. I get to sing, too. They don't sing here as much as we do, Edward, so they think I'm terrific." Her confiding tone was the first acknowledgement of their anomalous status, of their bond, and, reassured, he put his arm around her shoulders. When she turned back toward the cafŽ, he did not resist. 
"The play's such fun," she said.
	"What is it about?"
	"It's a famous old play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and I have such a good role: I'm the step-daughter who winds up with an assignation with her step- father! Big melodrama! There's a little singing and dancing and my music is lovely." She started humming a melody, sweet and wistful, with unfamiliar intervals.
	Edward could see that she was happy, Melankol defeated, her feet on dry land, as the old saying went. That was good, a relief, although as they walked back along the sidewalk beside the college's high iron fences, he wished she had said, Come in for lunch everyday; stop by as soon as you get up; I want to see you every minute. Instead, she was talking about the play, about this little theater, "a wonderful space" with fun colleagues. She worked at The Gallows, she said, so that she would have time for the rehearsals.
	They were only yards from the cafŽ when Edward asked what he had not wanted, had not dreamed of needing, to ask. "You are glad to see me, aren't you, Kara?"
	"Yes," she said, without looking at him, "but it's a bit of a shock. Didn't you feel a shock when you saw me? Just at first?"
	"I felt joy," he said.
	"Oh, Edward." When she turned to him, she had tears in her eyes. She pressed his hand and kissed him. "I have to go, really I do. One person can't work the counter alone. Come, come Sunday. Early's fine. Four, five. You can help me cook."
	He hugged her again, quick and hard, then she was hurrying to the cafŽ, turning, waving from the door, gone. Edward stood readjusting his breathing and remembering the touch of her breasts, the long curve of her back. Her hair smelled different, as if it had picked up the spicy smell of the cafŽ and some unfamiliar soap. And otherwise? Was she the same? Edward alternated between euphoria and doubt all the way downtown to the restaurant. Yes, she was the same, lovely as ever but healthy and happy, like the Kara he had known in the early days. That would be one block. By the next, he could feel the black obverse of euphoria, the fearful doubt which haunted his whole venture. She was not the same, she had lost her eagerness to see him, she was sorry he had come.
	At one point Edward felt so distraught he actually turned back toward the cafŽ, but caught himself halfway past the long college lawns. She had, after all, been here longer that he had. She had found a sort of life, just as he had; she had made new acquaintances, new friends. Perhaps more than friends, a treacherous doubt suggested: He could hear the dark man asking, There a problem, Kara, as he rose from his chair, protective and perhaps possessive. But no, Edward told himself, she couldn't have forgotten so quickly, she couldn't and she hadn't. She'd said, They don't sing here as much as we do ; she remembered that, so she remembered a different past, most likely as he did, without detail or color or much more than the fact of a hidden history. She'd had a surprise, even a shock with his arrival; she needed time, and he would just have to tread carefully. 
Although it pained him to wait even a day, Edward decided that he wouldn't turn up for lunch as he longed to do; he'd stay away from the cafŽ and arrive as invited on Sunday, and then _ then things would be all right. He was sure of it, though it was ironic that, in his innocence, he'd once believed everything would be clear once he found Kara. Not likely. He'd have to find a way back into her life, and he would. He told himself that as he made his way toward the restaurant, and repeated it while he bussed the tables, and reminded himself again when he stood, trim and neat in his bus boy's white shirt and his light pants on the porch of a brick and shingled three family house very like the one that had sheltered him and Hector the night of the raid. He pushed the doorbell and heard a chime deep inside, then footsteps, hurrying just short of a run. 
	"Edward. Come in, come in. Oh, for me?" She took the flowers (painstakingly culled from Saturday night's tables at the restaurant) then leaned over and kissed his cheek, as if to say, you remembered. "They're beautiful." 
The foyer was a high, square space with a complicated wooden staircase rising in tiers to the upper floors. A bicycle shared one corner along with several soccer balls and an unfamiliar type of game stick. There were shopping baskets, two cartons of beer can empties, a laundry bag, a table laden with books and magazines, and, in a row of near the door, a variety of hats and jackets both feminine and masculine. The wood floor was worn and dusty, and the air of clutter and improvisation was compounded by the penetrating bass lines of competing stereo systems on the upper stories, and, somewhere closer by, the high sounds of a flute.
	"Excuse the house," Kara said in a breezy way that seemed new. "We're all supposed to pitch in, but the longer the semester goes, the worse the housekeeping. I'm cook today, so no worries." 
	She led the way into the kitchen, big, as many ancient rooms seemed to be, and rather untidy, with ugly brown cabinets, and stained linoleum and appliances. Kara found a vase for her flowers and set them on the table, which held an assortment of vegetables and a bag of rice. Nervous, and uncertain quite where to begin and how much he might take for granted, Edward lifted one of the cabbages and pretended an interest in the squashes and some fine hard onions. "It's hard to find vegetables where I eat."
	"You don't have kitchen access?"
	He shook his head.
	"I didn't at first." She was silent for a moment and though Edward longed to know all her adventures, she just shook her head. "This is a nice group," she said. "We each cook once a week, though I usually trade off cleaning and cook more often. You can help me prepare if you want."
	He took off his jacket and began pulling withered leaves from the cabbages. "I'm working in a restaurant," he said.
	She gave a soft laugh. "You never cooked much."
	"I have to take what I can get. Without papers."
	"You need to get papers," she said in a serious tone. "Though you won't be asked except for work, because your Ancient English sounds perfect. Mine, too, don't you think?"
	Edward detected the barest hint of her old anxiety. "You're perfect in every way." He leaned over and kissed the back of her neck.
	"We need to get this ready." Her regretful tone made Edward smile. He'd been right not to press her, and he got busy at top speed with the knife, chopping and dicing so fast that, reading his mind, she laughed. She seemed much more relaxed; perhaps it had just been shock the other day, the surprise of seeing someone from 'home'.
 Soon the others began straggling in: Meghan, a tall, round faced girl with big capable white hands. She was the flute player and Kara's friend at the cafŽ. "Meghan found me this place," Kara said. She told Meghan and the others that Edward was a school friend thinking about moving to the area. He was "between jobs" and "working in a restaurant," which seemed to satisfy them. Soon Andrew, a lanky engineering student with frizzy auburn hair under a team cap, sat down at the table and began picking at the raw vegetables, while filling Kara in on the details of some TV show they both enjoyed. Next came Sam, small and neat with a lot of long blonde hair and a compact swimmer's physique; she was a physical therapy student, who entered with Matt, the owner of one of the booming stereos. He wrote advanced poetry, Kara said, and he smelled of the cigarettes that he smoked out on the porch.
 John, thin and dark, was a business major and an athlete. He arrived laden with books and almost jumpy with excess energy. Before dinner, he persuaded Sam to go out to the back yard, where they tossed a white rubber ball gently between them, catching it in the webbing of their game sticks. Edward stood by the sink, watching them trot back and forth, struggling, with much shouting and laughing, to keep the ball from bouncing into the neighbor's yard or endangering the lavish expanse of glass on every house wall. Every so often, they were able to keep the catch going for a considerable time, and then they were quiet, as if wholly concentrated in the moment, in motion, balance, and reciprocity. Their game seemed to Edward the very image of happiness, but his mind only rested there for a moment, before, by a train of associations probably triggered by John's dark features, he returned to the afternoon at the cafŽ. "And your other friend," he asked Kara. "What was his name, Austin? Does he live here?"
"No, he lives at his sister's on the other side of town. He comes by sometimes for dinner but I don't think he's coming tonight." 
Edward studied the lawn outside and smiled.
At dinner, the students crowded around the table noisy and cheerful with prodigious appetites. Edward was uneasy at first, expecting questions and awkward conversations, but they accepted him without curiosity. Sam did ask if he'd known Kara long. Forever, he said. And John wondered if he'd heard the Red Sox score. He hadn't. Edward exchanged few words with Matt on poetry, and he was on the verge of defending narrative verse when he caught himself. What did he know about such things but the fact of them and certain phrases: Pull, pull, pull for safety, which he associated, irrationally, it struck him, with sunshine and fun. Instead, he smiled and nodded at Matt's pronouncements on the state of modern poetry, so that once the poet gave up on him, Edward was able to turn his full attention to Kara, seated next to him, so close he could detect the faint fennel and cinnamon odor of the cafŽ. 
"This is good," he said, barely more than a whisper.
"I made it for you."
Happiness descended like a radiant bubble, enclosing them safely. Despite the others noisy around them, passing bread and plates of rice and vegetables and jars of hot sauce, joking, laughing, arguing, Edward felt an extraordinary intimacy with Kara. He had the sense, at once peculiar and enjoyable, that they were invisible to the others, that their words went unheard beyond their ears. He went so far as to ask if Sam and John were Committed _ he couldn't for the moment remember the Ancient English word _ and Kara said 'no' and explained about roommates and renting etiquette, which interested Edward but alarmed him too: Austin's absence might not be such a good sign after all. She began telling him about the cafŽ, about the play, about some trifling but amusing misadventures, which he countered with the Migra raid. When she laid her hand on his arm as he described how he and Hector had escaped, all his doubts vanished. She was his Kara again, his very own.
It was Matt's turn for cleanup and Meghan, who seemed a good sort, got out a dishtowel and helped with the drying. The others scattered to books or TV, a picture machine of the sort Edward had noticed through some windows. He stood in the doorway for a moment, fascinated, though the images moved so fast he felt his perception falling behind, then Kara touched his back. 
"Would you like to see my room?"
He put his arm around her and they went up the creaking stairs. Posters for concerts were plastered on the wall and a philodendron with yellowing leaves decorated the windowsill on the first landing. Edward was aware of the cracks in the plaster, smudges of paint on the white risers, dust motes floating in the low, evening light, myriad details made sharper by the sound of his blood pounding behind his ears. Up a second flight, then a short corridor with rooms on both sides. Kara opened a door and he saw flowered curtains, a mattress on a low platform, a chair and a table, all perfectly neat. Kara's uniform for the cafŽ was hanging in one corner, along with a winter coat and a shirt, which he guessed was pretty much her wardrobe. 
"The windows look out into the trees," she said and just for an instant, he remembered another apartment, a view toward the Highlands, before he took her into his arms. Onto the mattress, untangling clothing, her hair spilling over his hands, her shoulders, the low reddish light as he touched her face, then an ecstatic darkness filled with the surge of their bodies, strong enough, strong enough surely, to carry them both away and home and back to the lives they left behind. He didn't open his eyes until it was half dark; Kara's bright curtains were deep shades of gray, and the rectangle of the window held only the faintest light. He thought for a moment that it was morning elsewhere, before, before with Kara, for he could hear her quiet breath and feel the curve of her flank, then he heard the high reedy music of the flute and the metallic laughter of the TV and was astonished that such a discharge of energy and emotion had not been sufficient, that they were still in Kara's house in the ancient city.
She felt him stirring and rolled over to put her arm around his waist. "This is good," she said. "This is perfect with you here. Or nearly perfect _ you need papers to be safe."
"Kara, you're well; we're together. We can go anywhere. We don't need to stay."
She sat up, her figure pallid in the moonlight, her dappled face bewitching. "But I want to stay," she said. "I never want to leave this place."
				




















 Ten

	The rehearsal was held at the college, in one of those basement rooms that still made Edward nervous with intimations of rising water. At one end was a raised stage with a curtain and on the floor in front, a few rows of seats. Some performers were on stage, but Edward was surprised to see several more take up positions in the audience. 
	"It's a play within a play," Kara explained. "Some actors are rehearsing at the start and others are waiting their turn." She waved to a leggy young couple, all angles and floppy hair, who were sitting restless in the front row. "And then we come in. We're not actors, at all, we're fictional characters, and we're to have masks or really heavy, stylized make up, whatever Josh decides will be best under the lights. We want our story told, so we push the actors' play off the stage and put on our own story, instead. Pirandello was considered very advanced and strange in his day." 
	Edward smiled and shrugged. The recent peculiarities of his own life made even this plot seem plausible. 
	"Ian, Kara, Julie, Dylan, Pete, ready for your entrance? Julie, you have the dolls?" This was Josh, the director, a thin, energetic man with a lot of curly graying hair that covered the top of his head and wound around his ears before descending to his chin. He was dressed in a black t-shirt with an octopus printed on it, faded jeans, and sandals. He seemed keyed up and nervous.
	"I have to run. Sit here," Kara said, pressing Edward's hand. Then she darted to the hallway.
	"Places, everyone," Josh called, whereupon Edward was surprised to see two other men wander on stage and begin talking about lighting, before being joined by yet a third man who entered through the back and proceeded to go over everything Josh had done. After a few minutes Edward realized that this was the director within the play, a supposition confirmed when Josh rose from his place to correct some bit of business. 
	The actors rearranged themselves on stage; some returned to the seats, and Edward was just beginning to be restless when the back doors opened for the noisy and disruptive "Characters." Kara had done something new to her hair, pulling it back with a ribbon, and she walked differently, too, swinging her hips in an outlandish manner and giving the "Director" such an arch, suggestive look that Edward was half out of his seat.
	All the actors on and off the stage stared at her, and he was afraid that she had made some terrible gaff. Then, after a bit of dialogue from the Father and the Director, she broke into a song to accompany the steps of an unfamiliar dance that caused the actors, the real actors, that is, not the Characters, to stretch their arms toward her in an alarming gesture half supplicating, half demanding. Josh clapped his hands to stop the action. 
	"Very nice, very nice, Kara, but try it slower. The directions call for a 'slow foxtrot.' You're still a little fast. And cast, closer, closer to her. You see a part in her, Ashley, the part of a lifetime."
	Laughter at this, before they started again: The Father and Kara arguing, then her song, slower with a touch of melancholy that pierced Edward's heart. It was as if her illness, vanquished, had reappeared to haunt a silly song about Chu-Chin-Chow, transforming it into something rare and moving. And she, herself, was another person, this Stepdaughter character, rude, unhappy, rebellious _ completely convincing and irresistibly seductive. Now that he was over the surprise of a theatrical entertainment so different from anything he remembered, Edward was fascinated. Kara seemed as joyful as a bird freed from the banding nets, breaking into song, dance, or argument, happy in everything. With a sense of unease, he realized that this talent must have been there all along, sleeping or suppressed with no possible outlet. 
	When she'd told him that she would never leave, Edward had been too shocked to take her seriously. But in the rehearsal space, he saw Kara in a different light; she was a person with gifts, which, like the Characters, might demand expression.
	"You were marvelous," he said when the rehearsal was finished. Kara's hair was damp with sweat and her face was flushed with effort. 
	"Did you like it? Did you really like it?"
	"I liked you a lot. The play _" he hesitated. In fact, he didn't approve of quite a bit of it, and he didn't think the other actors were up to Kara's level. " _ is kind of strange. Understandable," he added, "But strange."
	"That's what I think, too. But such fun." She smiled and waved to the others, before taking Edward's arm and leaning affectionately against his shoulder. Although she had been busy for most of three hours, she seemed full of energy. They'd get a pizza _ did he like that?_ and go home. Maybe see some people at the restaurant _ he needed to meet people and make the contacts essential to get papers. Like Hector and Maria, Kara seemed to know a good deal about documents. This was useful knowledge, harmless in itself, but suggestive to Edward of permanence, of a commitment to now, to after. Exhilarated by the rehearsal, Kara did not notice his reservations and unease, but chattered on about friends he was "sure to like" and explained various details of the production: the lighting, which would be dramatic; the costumes, early twentieth century, some authentic; the music, actual period recordings! 
	Edward studied her bright, animated face and her obvious happiness weakened his anxiety. He leaned his head against hers and laughed at the stories of theatrical misadventures, missed cues, and silly flubs that carried them to a small, crowded establishment much like the coffee and sandwich shops Hector favored. This one smelled of spices and sauces, and soon they were seated before a vast disk of bread, cheese, and tomatoes, neatly divided into long triangles. He had hoped to eat with Kara alone, but various members of the cast kept dropping by, pulling up chairs, helping themselves to the pizza or contributing new ones with ever more complex toppings, when Kara suddenly looked across the room. "There's Austin! Hi, Austin."
	The big dark man waved, and a moment later, he was sitting down at their table with what looked like a whole loaf of bread stuffed with sauce and meatballs. "How's it going, Kara?" He nodded to Edward as if he's forgotten his name.
	"Super," she said, swallowing the last of their pizza and wiping her mouth. "It's going great. Josh was actually pleased today."
	Austin laughed as if he knew exactly how rare this was, and at this hint of intimacy Edward could	scarcely conceal his dislike. Besides, there was something about the man's appearance, something beyond his massive frame and his heavy, serious face. Something from before? With a kind of psychic lurch, Edward felt the pizza parlor with the noisy clientele and bustling waiters begin to thin out, as if there were something behind them, as if it were not a case of before and after at all, but of visible and invisible or before and just behind. 
	"I think we should go, Kara," he said abruptly.
	"Don't rush away on my account," said Austin. "You might want to hear about rehearsal, too."
	"I was there," Edward said. 
	"You get around. Time on your hands?" Something in his voice suggested he knew all about Edward's long hours and precarious position.
	"It's Edward's day off," Kara said quickly. "He wants to make the most of it."
	Austin gave an unpleasant smile, prelude to a quarrel, but Edward's brief glimpse of  instability had unsettled him so much that he simply wanted out. "Come on, Kara." Edward stood up and turned to leave. Behind him, he heard Kara making a half apology and promising to see him at the Gallows.
	Outside, Edward thrust his hands in his pockets and walked quickly with his head down. 
	"You weren't very polite to Austin," she said. "And you known Old Stock black people are very touchy _ so much ancient history."
	"No one invited him." 
	"People do that here. They see friends, they join them. It's no big deal. Besides, he's been very kind. I wanted you to be nice to him, Edward, because he helped me get my papers. He has contacts. We'll have to find someone else now." She put her hand on his arm, but Edward shrugged it off.
	"I don't need papers."
	"So you want to keep working in a restaurant with one eye out for the INS?"
	Edward turned and faced her. "I want to go home," he said. "I want us to go back."
	She stopped on the side walk, her hair bright under a street light, her face passionate. "I told you last night, I'm not going back. I thought you understood. I'm happy here. Can't you understand that?"
	"You can't just stay."
	"Why can't I? I had no one before except you and now you've come. Now you're here. Oh, Edward, we can be so happy. I know we can." 
	She projected an unexpected intensity, as if he'd never before seen the whole surprising force of her eager, loving, demanding personality. Though he was tempted to argue and sure he would win _ long term, her plan was clearly impossible _ he sensed it might be fatal to push their quarrel just now. Trying to keep his voice quiet and calm, he said, "I'm in a different situation. You know I had my parents, friends, work I loved."
"But you came." Her voice rose, bringing echoes of the Step Daughter. "You came. Why did you come if you didn't love me?"
"You know I love you. Why else would I have taken the risk? I wasn't sick. I was happy enough before. I came only because of you."
"I know that. I know that," she said. "I do. It's just not that simple. Please, you haven't been here that long, and things have been hard for you. Just give it a chance. Stay with me for a while. You'll be happy, you'll see, " she pleaded, and Edward found himself weakening. Time, time might work both ways. She might change his mind, but equally, he might convince her. He might. He would.
 "It means starting again entirely," he said.
	"That's why you need papers. You can start again, better, happier. You'll see. It takes a while. I felt the same way at first. I thought I'd made a terrible mistake, but I hadn't. And you haven't either. I know you haven't." She clutched his arm, her face intent, and, loving her, he smiled, though he knew now that she was a good performer and thought that he should take whatever she said with caution. 
	"Let's go back to your room." He nuzzled the top of her head.
 She took his arm, and, passing into the shadow of a street tree, he leaned over and kissed her. In her embrace, it was easy to suppress the unsettling moments in the pizza shop, the uneasy sense that he recognized Austin, even his creeping dislike of Ancient Hartford. There was only Kara, and in her room they found happiness.
For some time afterwards, they fell into an easy pattern. The weather was becoming warmer, and, without much money, they spent their time walking in the parks or exploring the city. By unspoken but mutual agreement, they avoided the topics that were in the back of their minds, papers and permanence, preferring to enjoy the good weather, health, a transient happiness. Edward found that having a routine helped. The work at the restaurant was hard, but he liked his co-workers and enjoyed Hector's stories about the auto body shop that was every bit as dubious as its owners. Gradually, his previous life grew more and more remote with memories of the city, his life, even his family, overlaid by an increasingly vivid present, comprised of Kara and work and new friends and entertainments. He found himself less often sensing water below some patch of dry ground, or hearing the whisper of reeds while crossing a parking lot, or detecting the vibration of the tide turbines under the throb of rush hour traffic. 
He might well have adapted had they not begun venturing further afield. There was, Kara said, a wonderful furniture shop that was a great treat to visit. It was on the way to the Highlands, which caused Edward to hesitate, but Kara said they could take the bus, and one Monday morning, he found himself in a giant vehicle shaped like a breadbox that wheezed and groaned at every stop. 
"Fun," said Kara.
Edward nodded. The city streets looked different from high up and they moved quite fast, not as fast as the cleaning crew's van but well beyond a walking pace. They passed the park with the gold dome of the capitol rising behind the trees, the station with the rail line, and the pylons and rush of the interstate. Edward craned his neck to try to spot Joseph's encampment but saw only a few sheets of plastic flapping in the perpetual breeze of the motors, before they climbed a long, gradient lined with what Kara said were corporate buildings and a giant, pale stone Old Style temple. Edward had walked out this way when he first arrived, and he was enjoying the ride until they reached the top of one hill and began a descent toward a second town without tall buildings and with many more trees than the city. Perhaps it was that nearly unbroken greenery at roof level or the dark and vaguely distorting tinting of the bus windows, but for the first time in quite a while, he began to feel that reality was porous, that everything around him, the road, the buildings, the solid trunks of the trees, was wavering and dissolving. 
"Is it hot in here?" he asked Kara.
"A bit. Shall we get out and walk? It's only a few more blocks."
They stepped down onto a broad sidewalk where the sharp, bright sun reflected off the cement and glittered in the windows like river light. 
"You've been working too hard," said Kara, for he actually staggered a little. 
"No, just, I don't know. Water passing over."
"What an odd phrase," said Kara and she started walking north.
 They passed a little commercial block with a coffee shop and complicated wooden houses, some with turrets and dormers and big-bellied porches carrying signs for doctors' and lawyers' offices. Stopped at one traffic light, they could see far down hill _ water somewhere at the bottom for sure, Edward felt _ and then, rising behind the town, the Highlands. He was dizzy again, but Kara took no notice, talking as she was of the shop, which sold all contemporary construction, though there were, further out, shops with real antiques. Very, very old. "Imagine that," she said. "Centuries earlier."
Edward tried to smile and focused on the motors, the sidewalk, the familiar green of the lawns, some with tulips, thick and fleshy, flaunting sexy reds, oranges, and yellows. I'll be fine, he thought, as long as I don't look north. No Highlands. Just the city. But he sensed that the bus had followed the track of the Raised Road well beyond the city he knew, that they were in unknown territory. Maybe that was why everything seemed vague and wavering to him, although whenever Kara said, "There's a deli" or "I like that house with the shutters," the objects would come into focus and the streetscape regained its coherence.
"We're almost there," she said.
"How did you find this place?"
"I came out with Meghan. She has a friend in West Hartford. We're almost there, next block." She hurried with eagerness, and Edward followed, the pale buildings and flourishing trees streaming by him, blending together like reeds in rain until they reached a low, buff brick building with display windows crammed with furniture.
Double glass doors that triggered a bell brought them inside a vast storehouse, where couches, tables, chairs, desks, cabinets, and chests of all sorts in a variety of styles, painted, stained, polished, plain, ornamented, padded, or metallic, were arranged in artful little groupings. There were lamps, too, glowing softly on polished surfaces and deepening the velvets and silks of the cushions. A wealth of little ornaments sat on the tables, and pictures hung on partial and moveable walls, so that one passed from one small "room" to the next, each forming a little vignette to tempt free spending clients to take everything home. 
"I just love this," said Kara. "I want a room with furniture just like this." She patted a small sofa with plump cushions and a curved back, all covered in a wild floral of tulips and leaves. 
Edward felt cold suddenly. There was something familiar about _ what? His eyes were drawn to the flowers and leaves, oak leaves, an ancient species common here. And tulips. He had a fleeting impression, too faint to quite qualify as a memory, of Kara with a scarf? Was it a scarf? A textile of some sort draped over her shoulders, the tulips too red against her own bright hair.
She had moved on to something she called a secretary with a deep reddish stain. "Look at this. It's a reproduction of a really early piece, a museum piece. You know, I've been to the museum here. Overwhelming. We must go. You'll love it."
Edward nodded though he doubted he would if the museum produced the same chilly nausea as the shop. Kara, entranced, did not notice his discomfort, and he was calculating how soon they could leave, when an elderly man emerged from the back of the building. He was pale and stooped, with short white hair and tinted glasses.
"May I help you?" 
"We're just admiring," Edward said, hoping Kara would take this as a signal to go. Instead, she turned and smiled.
"Everything's lovely," she said.
"Is that Ms. Wistley?" the old man asked. "I thought so. These sun glasses are such a nuisance, but I've had a cataract removed."
"You had mentioned," said Kara. "Did that go well?"
"Yes, yes, indeed, thank you. Another one in six months. Good to see you again." 
When Kara introduced them, Al Mynd put out a large, reddish hand, bigger and stronger than his shrunken body would suggest. Behind the dark glasses, Edward caught a glimpse of a cold blue eye and felt another inward chill. This man was familiar; he'd known him and disliked him, though recognition lay somewhere below the level of memory.
"Anything special today, my dear?" 
"Everything," said Kara, and Mr. Mynd laughed. 
"I have a little something," he said in the confidential, almost flirtatious tone men often adopted with Kara. "Just for you." 
They moved toward another section of the shop, while Edward pretended an interest in an elaborate fake window with a shade, under drapes, some sort of top decoration, and side panels, all in different materials and patterns, as if light and air were enemies to be fended off with lustrous textiles. Faint snatches of Kara's and Mynd's conversation drifted around carved wooden screens, and giant vases with convoluted designs of flowers and dragons, and lamps with writhing metal stands.
"...expensive, but so pretty."
"A discontinued print. I could maybe..."
"You make it hard to refuse..." Laughter.
The shop darkened and Edward felt dizzy as the floor rocked beneath him like a river barge. He heard the ring of boots on metal, before Kara was beside him again, holding a small, nicely framed picture in her hands like a talisman.
"Look at this!"
It was a black and white photograph of a woman with large, light eyes, sharp cheekbones and much upswept hair. "She was a famous actress," Kara said, "and she was born here. Imagine."
"Very nice. Listen, I feel so warm in here. I'll wait for you outside. Don't rush," he added. "I know you enjoy poking around."
On the sidewalk, he took gulps of the cool, motor scented air. The main street was clear and perfectly solid. I must have picked up some bug, Edward thought. The restaurant exposes you to all sorts of colds. He sauntered down a little cross street as he waited, but he hadn't gone more than a dozen yards before he began to feel uneasy again. His vision seemed cloudy and vaguely distorted, as if he were looking at the trees and houses under water or through some thick distorting glass. He turned around; all normal on the main street. I am in a strange place, he thought; somewhere I have never been, not before. He returned to the shop and sat anchored safely on the edge of the long ornamental planter until Kara came out, her photo in a little paper packet.
He didn't ask the question until they were back in the city and walking through the park. From far down one of the rolling green lawns, they heard the carrousel music and a skateboard rattling along a path.
"Do you ever feel that you recognize people here?" 
Her eyes slid away. "What do you mean? Of course, I recognize people."
"I meant before you know them. When you first meet them or even first see them, you have a reaction, you like them or don't, as if you've known them before _ that's what I mean."
"Like dŽjˆ vu?"
"Sort of but isn't that events, places? I meant people."
"I don't think so." She looked away toward the brownstone monument arch in a way he found evasive. "Like who?" she asked after a moment. "Who have you thought you recognized?"
"Well, the old man in the shop for one. Does he seem familiar to you?"
"Of course. I've met him several times. He always saves some little thing for me." She gave the complacent smile of a pretty woman used to favoritism.
"He seems familiar to me," said Edward stubbornly.
"And you remember where_?"
"No. Just that I once knew him before, I think that's it."
"When you're here longer," Kara said, "you won't remember."
"Ah, so you've had it happen."
"But it's not true, you know. People look the same, is all. There's no reason to think _ I mean, how could it be?"
"We're not the only ones," Edward said. "You know that. And Joseph says _"
"Joseph's not one of us."
"No, I don't think so, but that you and I are unique isn't plausible, either."
"None of this is plausible; it just happened," Kara said, but she changed the subject, and in the coming days Edward noticed that she was careful to avoid all mention of before and all discussion of the odd psychic states that sometimes afflicted them. 



	
	
		               












Eleven

	Nonetheless, Edward kept returning to the topic. On their walks, he would point out a pedestrian who seemed familiar; he'd mention an unusual sounding, non-ancient name in the daily paper, or he'd remark that some situation, trivial in itself, reminded him of _ but here came the difficulty, because she refused to concede there might be something in his vague recollections, and he could do no better than assert that he or she or it was familiar, that he had known someone or something similar, that he felt water moving. Kara was at first evasive, then irritated, then indifferent. "Really?" she'd ask and change the topic.
	Still, he kept groping for evidence, for reasons why he'd feel a chill in the now warm Ancient summer or why his vision blurred in strange places or why it seemed to him that smells, and even sounds, of whatever he'd known before lingered in the gaseous air.
	"I remember very little," she said one day. "Mostly that I had reasons to leave." She was cross and pale with one of the severe headaches that sometimes afflicted her and were, Edward suspected, the main symptom of an imperfect adjustment. She often got one if he persisted in speaking of before, and he knew that she hated to be pressured. Now she added, "If you were really so fond of before, you'd remember, wouldn't you?"	
Edward didn't know, and gradually, in spite of his happiness with Kara, he found himself lethargic and depressed. At work he was tired from lugging heavy trays all night and bored with the routine of the restaurant. He found himself looking out the window for glimpses of the night sky and longing, with an almost physical hunger, for the solitude of water and marsh. Occasionally this impulse grew so strong that, instead of visiting Kara at the Gallows, he walked all the way to the river and sat looking into the swift dark water that rested his soul. But there, oddly enough, water was just water. The river ran within its banks, gulls settled on little backwaters, once an eagle soared overhead _ all lovely but suggesting nothing. No, it was elsewhere, on empty parking lots or along shadowy side streets that before returned to him with a kind of hyper alertness that detected other sounds and smells beneath the city bustle, sensations that remained tantalizingly just beyond recognition. 
	Kara's presence remained the highlight of his days, but Edward realized that he was becoming bad company, disinclined for the little excursions that she enjoyed. Then rehearsals started again, this time for a musical with dancing and singing _ very strenuous, Kara said _ and the additional preparation ate steadily into their time together. Without intention, and certainly without desire, they found themselves disputing trifles, unserious arguments that yet foreshadowed quarrels the way tree leaves turn up their silvery bellies before a storm. One day the disagreement was over the mall, a vast shopping precinct just beyond the city.  
	"It's not far," Kara insisted. She was washing up some dishes and Edward was drying. 
	"You don't walk all night at work." 
	"We're not going to walk. There's a bus goes right out. I've been and Meghan's going, too _ no way we'll get lost."
	Edward struck immediately. "Why would you get lost?"
	Her eyes slid away from his. "I mean in the bus routes; I think you need a transfer. From the Old State House."
	Edward gave a sour smile, sure that was not what she'd meant at all. One of the things that irritated him about Kara was her refusal to recognize any of the peculiarities of their new abode, the most noticeable being the essential vagueness of any territory beyond the old CC. She pretended she had no problems, no problems at all, yet now and again she would let slip the evidence. No way we'll get lost. What was that but an admission that she'd suffered from the same blurring vision and bending reality as he had? And Meghan! Nice as she was, what was she along for but to steer them both safely to and from this gargantuan bazaar? Of course, Kara would not admit that.
	"Well, if you don't want to go, I'll just go with Meghan _ but it has to be Sunday. We're not both off Mondays _ as you know."
	They went back and forth like this _ it was really too stupid, both of them making themselves miserable over a shopping trip, when neither of them had money and when they might have made a terrific picnic and sat out in the park for free. Then Sam looked in from the hall and said she could drive them: they'd all go. She needed some item desperately _ that's how she talked. This usually charmed Edward, but today her exaggerations sent him fathoms deep. Seeing his face, she took his arm and Kara's and kicked up her feet, mimicking some dance from the new musical, and made them laugh, Edward, too. To please Kara and so that Sam and Meghan wouldn't think him unreasonable, he agreed to visit the Mall. 
	Sam had a white motor with a door in the back and a serious set of coughs and rattles. Edward sat behind with Kara, holding her hand as they rumbled up onto the interstate. She smiled at him but her palm was damp.
	"You can see the college," she said, pointing across the dizzy lanes of motors and trucks.
	He could, and very top of the bigger Travelers Tower, too. Edward rested his eyes on the brown and gray towers. The rest of the landscape swirled around him as if the world were only a painted scrim like the backdrop to Kara's play and their drive west was stretching everything, road, trees, buildings, the very curvature of the earth. 
	In the front seat, Sam chattered about going to Nordstrom, which seemed to be a favorite. "They have some very cool skirts and tops. Mine are all bor-ing."
	"Anything to do with that hot guy you met?" asked Meghan.
	"Everything!" said Sam and the girls laughed. 
	"Where you going, Kara?"
	"Furniture, of course."
	"Kara's got Macy's on her back." Meghan said.
	"Well, we know where you're going." 
	"Govida is research, if you must know. For my chocolateria of the future."
	"And indulgence of the present," said Sam.
	Edward tried to focus on the back of her blonde head and the interior of the motor where all was solid and real. Behind them, the glass high rises and the intricately woven ribbons of the interstate diminished; ahead was a sharply curving ramp and a massive gray structure surprisingly ringed with water _ no, not water, parking lots. Full of motors, among which Sam searched and maneuvered until she found a space. She looked at her watch. "Meet at Au Bon Pain?"
	"Four? Five?" Meghan asked.
	They settled on 4:30 before venturing through the glass doors. Above were high white ceilings and, underfoot, marble, glossy as oiled water, reflected the hundreds of lights glittering off the merchandise. At least, Edward assumed it was merchandise, though there were dolls, bigger even than the ones used in Kara's play, all dressed up and looking, despite their gold or silver hands and faces, about to step off their pedestals.
	"Aren't those dresses pretty?" asked Kara, taking his arm. What had been a blur of red and black became an assortment of garments, ruffled or pleated or adorned by other dressmaking tricks beyond Edward's vocabulary. There were blouses, too, black, white, and every pastel shade, and suits, with both skirts and pants, and, despite the heat, sweaters for autumn in falling leaf colors. 
	They crossed the store, navigating the shoals of leather goods, and rounded the scent-drenched islands of perfume and cosmetics, where pink and white-coated women with elaborate hair and touched up eyes dispensed advice along with their artfully packaged concoctions. In the distance, the mysteries of lingerie gave way to pink, yellow, and blue infant garb before the vaulted main concourse opened under a domed net of triangular skylights. They made their way around ornamental planters filled with bright foliage to a steep moving shaft that plunged to a lower lobby where a tiny tropical grove thrived near a water feature surrounded by more gleaming marble. Disregarding posted warnings about the dangers to small children, bare feet, and wheeled carts, Sam stepped boldly onto this disconcerting contraption with Meghan right behind her. "We have to take the escalator down."
Edward and Kara followed cautiously, clutching the polished rail and suspicious of the ridged metal grills that folded and dropped to form steps. At the bottom, their momentum propelled them toward yet another array of gaily lit shops. Sam hurried off toward the promised lands of Nordstrom, while Meghan led Edward and Kara left into another wing of the mall. Beyond a closed up sports shop was a store-front noisy with the sound of tropical birds and animals. Edward stopped, transfixed.
"Rainforest CafŽ _ kiddie treat," said Meghan. 
"A restaurant?"
"Themed to the max. Haven't you seen one? To be avoided."
Edward shook his head. The sound of birds, of water, even amidst what were now clearly fake ruins, seemed so suggestive that he followed the women only reluctantly to a window with a lavish display of clothing in sharp citrus colors. The dolls here were headless, armless, and footless, their truncated torsos _ svelte and busty _ propped up on metal poles like victims of some obscure torture. By the time Meghan and Kara reached the consensus that the sweaters were "very last year," Edward felt himself getting warm even in the  powerful air-conditioning. The women admired gleaming leather bags, swollen with expense, and lingered before a jewelry store where watches, pins, rings, and bracelets perched like butterflies on dark velvet covered pedestals, before Meghan angled away toward the chocolateria. Kara and Edward turned into the Furniture Gallery and Men's store. They skirted the gray, blue, and brown ranges of men's suits and jackets, and crossed the bright suburb of sportswear to reach a vast emporium set up, like old Mynd's furniture store, as a series of little wall-less bedrooms, dining rooms, and living rooms. Kara gravitated toward the beds, each mattress covered in a resplendent heap of bedding and topped by an Everest of pillows. There were bed skirts and coverlets, overstuffed quilts that she told him were 'duvets', pillows that weren't really pillows at all but 'shams', and needlepoint cushions strictly for decoration. There were sheets and blankets and throws and spreads. "Aren't these pretty," Kara asked.
The patterns began to waver before Edward's eyes. There was a virtual forest of leaves and flowering branches, queerly intersected with stripes like the shadow of trees on water, and like those shadows, moving slowly  on some interior current.
"I think I'm going to step outside," he said. "I saw some interesting bromeliads in that big decorative planter."
"You're all right?" asked Kara, giving him a close look. 
"Oh, yeah," he said quickly. "But there are some other tropicals _"
She smiled, eager to be reassured. "It is fun here, isn't it? Weren't we right to come?"
"Sure," he said with as much enthusiasm as he could manage.
She moved toward the next display with a smile. "Meet you at the restaurant."
He got himself out of bedding, which, as soon as he separated from Kara's besotted vision, threatened with its rows of bloated quilts and pillows to engulf him in softness like the swollen corpses of nightmare. He could feel his ears ringing, and whenever he looked left toward dining tables and dinette sets or right toward the dangerous ranks of couches and chairs, his vision blurred. Edward blamed his eyes, though the thought came to him that whatever lay behind the scrim of appearance might be coming to light. I am ScienceSide, he told himself, though where those words came from, he didn't know. I am ScienceSide and this is mysticism and Super. These enigmatic words rang so clearly within his interior space that Edward stopped at the entrance to the lower concourse, momentarily becoming an obstacle to traffic. 
Don't look up, don't look down. Focus on the plants, he told himself. A grove with bromeliads, several palms, a banana _ was that really a banana plant? Yes, with fruit! And clivias, he knew clivias, and big leaf philodendrons, and was that perhaps an orchid? His legs rubbery, he made his way through the crowd to the safety of real and indisputable tropical foliage, and sat down on the wide marble ledge surrounding the basin with its fountain and coin dotted bottom. The water smelled of chemicals but the coins glittered like debris in shallow water, like metal fragments on mud. 
He looked up, though he had warned himself not to: the concrete struts supporting the windows formed a pointed dome glowing blue with the high summer sky. For a moment, Edward's heart stopped with the shock of remembrance: the struts, shattered and eroded, water everywhere, a rising storm wind. He remembered a massive ruin, bigger than anything he'd seen before _ where? _ he didn't know _ and fear, fearfulness, some danger. Don't look up, he thought, but his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the vast ceiling construction, to the light. Light and concrete struts and the sound of water. And below, at his feet, the floor, no longer marble, but water, water moving beneath _ what? He couldn't remember and that combination of memory and blankness, of before and after, of prosperity and disaster, gripped him with premonition. 
He stood up. His impulse to warn about water, storm, and collapse was stifled by a sudden flight of youngsters, bright and noisy, whose sandals clacked on what was indisputably the floor. They passed, and Edward smelled water again and saw broken concrete overhead. Forgetting even Kara, he bolted down the darkening concourse which flowed around him in a swirl of colors like oil on water, formless but infinitely suggestive. The chatter and rustle of shoppers passing suggested wind moving though the narrow alleys of the CC, and the light bouncing off the glistening floor tiles once again created the illusion of water, ankle deep, knee deep, thigh deep. He might have sunk into that liquid hallucination and never emerged but for the sound of birds squawking and a medley of jungle sounds that drew him through the doors of  _ what had Meghan called it? _a theme restaurant. 
Giant sculptured elephants, raised trunks and spread ears frozen in fiberglass, a spotted cat reclining on a branch, the broken pinkish walls of a ruin ornamented with barbaric designs, and, everywhere, palms, vines, and shrubs, real, fake and indeterminate. Tables, too, people eating, the bustle of late lunch, afternoon snacks, early dinners. Spotting a tray beside a not yet cleared table, Edward stacked the plates deftly, transferring dishes and glassware to the tray. He reached behind him for the cloth he usually wore at his waist before noticing a spray bottle and sponge nearby. A squirt and two wipes and the table was ready for resetting. He hoisted the tray onto his shoulder and went through the double doors to the kitchen, dodging a waiter on the way and collecting a surprised look. A quick glance around for the dishwashing station, tray down, and straight for another door at the back. There were some voices directed at him, definitely at him, but Edward was already entering the interior corridor beyond, gray and functional, lit with white, sour lights and leading deep into the building, the building where he had once met, once found, once helped _ but memory failed him and he broke into a run.
He  took the first corner with an electronic crackle behind him: security of some sort; he had to get out of the building. He spotted an exit door and, disregarding the alarm warning, thrust himself against the bar; locked. Further down the corridor, dizzy with the chase and the blurring of his vision, Edward saw a row of doors labeled with shop names. He could escape back into the mall, and he was reaching for the door to Lane Bryant, when he spotted the camera. Thinking there would be an alarm, and he lunged ahead toward another exit in the outer wall, this one apparently without security technology. He crashed the handle, ready to disappear amidst the motors and shoppers, but saw, not the parking lot, but a gray stair leading down. Edward was choked by an apprehension of quick mud and darkness, then with running footsteps in the corridor, he rattled down a staircase with metal treads. He found himself in a long, low passage, festooned with wiring and cables on both sides and topped by pipes and ducts. He frantically tried every door he passed, but all were locked with those special boxes for key cards. Security would catch him and what could he say? How could he explain his mad sprint through the mall when all his explanations would sound like madness? And possibly were madness, for he smelled water again and saw dead ahead a trickle of darkness issuing from under a door, a door that was, doubtless against all regulations, propped open with a piece of wood. 
Edward heard the metal treads ringing behind him and slipped inside to white fluorescent lights over a long workbench littered with tools. The patient du jour was a vast metal box full of leaking coils and tubing. Edward stepped over the puddle and let the door close softly behind him. He clambered behind a stack of supply cartons and held his breath. Soon the security detail was noisy in the hall outside, calling on their radios and rattling at the doors. Had he missed all the water? Had he left a footprint? They would think he was crazy, he might be confined, he might never get back. Why not escape now, return to wherever he had been before? Leave this place with all its strangeness _ it must be possible, it must be. But he could not leave Kara; the laws of the universe are not infinitely flexible; they had to stay or go together. 
	The electronic crackle of the radios faded, but Edward suspected that they would be thorough: Ancient Hartford was afflicted with paranoia. Perhaps they would bring a dog. It was all up if they had a dog. He strained his ears for the rattle of canine claws, for the eager bark, for alert handlers praising their beast. Nothing. And then, just as he was thinking that enough time had passed, that he might make his exit, an annoyed feminine voice was followed by the sound of plastic slipping into metal. The door opened, followed by the bang of something catching the casement, and the thump of a heavy item being dragged along the floor. A scrape of metal, a clatter of tools. Edward eased his head around the cartons to see a woman dressed in a gray maintenance outfit. She had a lot of wavy dark hair pulled back from her face, and, though small, she had already wrestled the large box from her hand truck onto the floor and was now clearing a space on the worktable for the contents. 
	Had he touched something? Had he moved, by even a millimeter, one of the boxes? The woman froze, one hand still reaching toward a tool, and though Edward pulled his head back and held his breath, she'd detected something _ or, more likely, was on high alert thanks to the security detail. "Who's there? Is someone there?"
	He did not answer.
	"I have my phone."
	At the warning beep, Edward stepped out from his hiding place. "Please don't," he said. "I can explain." 
	She had a sizeable wrench in one hand; the other was moving swiftly across the buttons, bringing security, perhaps police.
	"I remembered water," he said desperately and held his hands up to show he was not armed. "I remembered before and panicked and wanted to warn _ and next thing I was in the restaurant, the one with the birds and elephants. I work in a restaurant," he said. Her hand still hovered over the last digits. 
	"Don't come any nearer," she said.
	"No, no. I just want to get out. The floor, the floor turned to water, and I remembered the sky light, broken, eroded, and a dangerous marsh." Unintelligible, Edward thought, I'm totally unintelligible. "My name is Edward Nemph," he said then. "And I'm really not crazy."
	"Dora," she said. "I'm Dora."
	He saw now that there was a label on the front of her blouse: Dora Ashansa. A familiar name, a modern name that he somehow knew. 
	"Hey," she said. "You're not going to pass out, are you?"
	"I don't know. If I could maybe sit down?"
	She pointed to an office chair he had not previously noticed. He put his head between his knees and breathed rapidly.
	"You haven't been here very long, have you?"
	When he looked up, he saw that she was leaning casually against the workbench. 
	"Long enough to know I should be getting back."
	"Some adjust, some don't. It maybe depends on what you've left behind."
	"I came for someone," Edward said and stood up. She was one of them, and, with that realization, the room stopped spinning and he found his feet were back on dry ground. He started to elaborate, but she held up her hand: footsteps in the corridor. He moved toward the cartons but she pointed under the workbench that was protected by shelves full of tools and supplies. After he was safely stowed, she resumed work, and when someone called, "Security check," she put down her tools with a convincing rattle. 
	"Nothing," she said in response to their question and opened the door wide so that the two uniformed men could look inside.
	"...disappeared," Edward heard one say.
	"Up in the ductwork with the rats?" That was Dora, joking.
	A laugh. "Give me a break." 
	A little more banter, almost unintelligible, as if she had let the door nearly close, then the click of the latch, and the sound of scraping metal.
	"You can give me a hand with this," she said after a few minutes. 
	He crawled out to help her lift a box of belts onto the table, then leaned against it and watched her work. She had a pretty round face and broad capable hands with short fingers and green painted nails. 
	"You said you came for someone."
	"Yes," Edward told her about Kara, about finding her again. "We were in the mall," he said. "She loves the furniture stores. I stepped out to look at the planter and things fell apart. Nothing was quite real anymore and I saw the water and remembered _"
	Dora looked at him curiously. "What did you remember?"
	"Not enough. Just enough to know I'd been here. I mean, here before. Before I came."
	"I know what you mean. It's not uncommon. Why should it be? All this can be wonderful but it's not real in quite the same way, is it?" Something about her seemed so familiar when she said that. Not the words, so much, as the tart and logical delivery. There was something in her voice, some half forgotten timbre.
	"No," said Edward with a kind of relief. "Though Kara thinks it is." He had not admitted that fully to himself before. "She aims to stay forever."
	"I thought about that." Dora tightened up a bolt in a practiced way.
	"And what did you decide?"
	But she wasn't telling. "I think we'd do better to figure out how to get you out of here," she said.

			     






Twelve

They went to the service elevator, Dora with a heavy plastic helmet under one arm and a waist high plastic bag stuffed with discarded tape and packing peanuts; Edward's face and civilian clothes were hidden by the enormous bundle of broken down cardboard cartons he clutched in his arms. When the elevator doors opened, another worker got out of the elevator. "See you've got an assistant today," the man said.
"This is Edward, one of those interns from the tech school. I'm trying to teach him everything they don't tell you in class."
"Like carting trash," the fellow said good-naturedly. Edward had to juggle the unstable pile of cardboard to shake his hand before edging into the elevator beside Dora.
"I thought that was it." Edward's stomach began a slow ascent after dropping to somewhere near his knees.
"You know," she said as she pushed the buttons, "I used to be just the most timid thing. I was scared to say anything to anybody. And now, I don't care."
At that moment, trapped in the elevator and still in the depths of the mall, Edward was disinclined to discuss transformations. But when they were safely in the parking lot with the cardboard stowed in one of the vast recycling bins and the plastic in another, he asked, "Do you think it really changes us?"
"I think that's why we came," she said. "Except you, maybe."
"Maybe," said Edward, "though the mind is like water."
"I haven't heard that in a while," Dora said with a smile. 
Edward looked around the parking lot, the once dense ranks of motors rapidly thinning out. "I bet Kara and her friends will have gone home." 
"Must have. Mall closed half an hour ago. What will she think? Will she call the police?"
Edward hadn't thought of that. "No. Maybe she'll think I've gone. I've got to get back. There must be a bus."
"I have a scooter _ ancient but I can keep it running. After a tide turbine none of this stuff is hard. You can hitch a lift on the back, though I don't have a helmet for you."
"I'll take the chance."
 "I sometimes wonder," Dora said as she led the way to a rusty two wheeled contrivance that seemed very small amidst the other parked motors, "if we really take risks here at all."
"What do you mean?" Edward asked, though he felt doubt stirring like a rogue tide and, in one way, knew exactly what she meant.
"Just how real is all this?" she asked with a wave of her hand. "Some days, some of my reckless days, I'm tempted to find out. The experimental mind at work," she added as she hopped onto the scooter. Half embarrassed by the proximity of their legs, not to mention her round and solid bottom, Edward climbed behind her, put one hand behind him to grip the edge of the seat, and placed the other tentatively on her waist.
"Hang on tight!" She said as she turned the key. The motor whined then caught. As they rolled forward from her parking place, she pulled up her feet, and at once they were sweeping across the parking lot, fast and low to the ground like a swooping gull. Forgetting all notions of CC propriety, Edward grabbed her around the waist and tried to keep his head behind hers. Brake and a bump, and they were on the street, cars on both sides, both directions, Dora weaving to the outer lane, Edward trying to follow her every shift. Please, not the interstate, he thought, but no, a small mercy, just the street. Hot wind off the boiling tarmac, exhaust from the motors, the roar of accelerating cars and trucks, colors pouring by him fast, faster, the world a blur. Escape velocity: old words for a new situation. Having escaped before in the Mall, Edward feared that he was now to be launched physically into some mysterious alternative, a notion that was bathing his system in adrenalin, when, suddenly, deceleration as the little scooter stopped at a traffic signal behind the vast white and chrome rear end of a giant motor.
Dora twisted her neck and shouted, "Mind if we stop for a sandwich? I miss lunch so I'm starving after work." 
"No problem." Edward said, as the motors around them huffed gas fumes around them. In the distance, he spotted the big Travelers Tower, sharp and solid, and, by fixing his watering eyes on the spire, he kept in contact with present reality until they nipped down a side street. Avoiding parked cars and two careless pedestrians, Dora turned smartly into the lot of a small restaurant. "Quick stop," she warned. Edward dropped his feet onto the asphalt with relief.
"You okay?"
"Sure," he said. "Great sensation. You're so close to the road you really feel the speed."
"Close to trucks, too," she said, looking at his white face. "Listen, it takes getting used to."
"I'd be all right if things didn't get blurry around the edges. Like I need glasses badly, but I really don't, because most of the time I see just fine."
"We all have symptoms," Dora remarked when they were seated in a booth with overstuffed sandwiches. "Though not all the same ones."
Edward nodded. He noticed she did not discuss her own anomalies.
"The worst goes _ or I guess you go back." She spoke casually as if either alternative would be okay with her.
"I suppose it wouldn't be real life if you knew your future for sure," Edward said. 
"Uncertainty is fundamental." When he gave her a sharp look, she asked, "What?"
"I can't believe we haven't met before _ I mean before. You don't look familiar, but you sound familiar."
"Forbid it! I like to think I'm unique."
"Maybe just a turn of phrase. Kara's careful _ her Ancient English is perfect. Not that yours isn't great, too." 
Dora was not interested in this line of thought. "You want to call her?" she asked abruptly. "Tell her you're ok?"
"Have you one of those cell things?" Edward asked with both eagerness and trepidation. He was anxious to see Kara, yet he could think of no good explanation to give her friends and nothing reassuring to tell her, either.
"Too expensive _ but there's probably a public phone here. You put in a phone card. Maybe even coins."
"She's waited this long. It isn't very far now, is it?"
"Two minutes," Dora said, crumpling up her sandwich wrapper and finishing the last of her chips, as if she were truly enthusiastic about Ancient cuisine.
Back to the scooter, which Edward now saw bore an ominous brand name, Riptide.
"Perfect, huh?" Dora nodded toward the much corroded name plate. 
"It has that feeling," Edward agreed, then they were off in a gut clenching surge _ amazing, he thought, that it was common to eat so much peculiar food before engaging in traffic. He searched the twilight sky for the spire, and, when he found it, the towers of downtown, the wall of the interstate, the railroad bridge, all came into focus, enabling him to direct Dora down the darkening side streets to Kara's house.
"Here you are. Curbside service."
"Thank you so much. For everything. I don't know what I'd have done back in the Mall."
"You'd have thought of something. Nothing like imminent arrest to focus the mind." She put out her hand, and, momentarily forgetting the custom, Edward clasped it for a moment before hurrying onto the porch where he turned and waved. A deep breath, then he rang the buzzer, three long times in his agitation.
"I'm coming, I'm coming."
He recognized Sam's voice. 
"Well, look who's here." She turned away and hollered up the stairs. "Kara! Look who the cat dragged in! Boy, are you in trouble," she said to Edward, but with a wink so that he understood she was teasing. He was suddenly glad that Dora and her scooter had already left the area, that he hadn't tried to invite her in.
A clatter above brought Kara downstairs so fast she almost stumbled at the bottom. "Are you all right? What happened? I thought, I thought you were _." White-faced and near tears, she seized his arms.
 "I don't know what happened. I went to look at the ornamental plants and suddenly I felt dizzy."
"Oh, I was afraid of that." Kara looked at Sam. "I said to you, didn't I, that I was afraid he'd had a seizure?"
"We called security," Sam said. "But they couldn't find you."
"Well, it was the craziest thing," said Edward, thinking, in more ways than one. "Whatever happened, I must have wandered into that restaurant with the bird noises _"
"The Rainforest?" 
"Yeah. You know I'm working in a restaurant, and automatic, I guess, I walked right into the kitchen and out the back door."
"Sounds like a fugue state," said Sam.
Kara gave her a look.
"I wound up in the basement, the lowest level of the mall. I don't know how long I was there." That wasn't strictly true, because Dora's workroom had a clock, one of the digital models with the jumping numbers, but Edward thought it wise to skip the details. "I don't know if the buses run that late, but I got a lift back. Safe and sound," he said and put his arm around Kara, who was looking teary eyed. "I'm all right, really. I'm sorry to have put you to trouble," he told Sam formally.
"No harm done. Kara did say you have a condition. But for sure it made for a dramatic day at the mall." 
Tears were running down Kara's cheeks, and with a nod to Sam, Edward led her upstairs. 
"I was so afraid," she said in a low voice as soon as the door closed behind them. "I was so afraid you'd gone." She flung her arms around him and kissed him until he began to feel reality altering in a highly positive way. 
 "I wouldn't go without you," he said, cupping her face in his hands. "I promise, Kara. I won't go without you. It was just for a moment, I felt everything _ slipping, that's what it felt like, everything slipping away, but I wouldn't leave you behind. And then I felt neither here nor there, or as if I was in two places at once."
"You're safe now," she said quickly, as if she did not want to know any more. "The first times in new places are hardest, and crowds, big spaces. I should have thought. Edward, I just didn't think!"
"But you're glad I stayed? You're not sorry that I came back? I've thought sometimes_"
"I've never regretted, never," she said. "As long as you're all right. I'm so happy that you're safe, that you're here."
"I'm perfectly all right," he said, but though she brought him great pleasure, freer and wilder than anything they had experienced together before, there was something missing. Her passionate relief and joy, which he had wanted so much the day he first found her at The Gallows, had perhaps come too late, and now their emotions were subtly out of sync. Perhaps it was the shock of whatever it was that had happened or almost happened in the Mall, or his uneasiness at her quick lie to her friends, or just the necessity of concealing their essential foreignness. But she loved him, he knew now she did, and when they were naked in each other's arms, their damp bodies cooled by the night breeze, she whispered, "This is real. Wherever we have this, is real. Everything else can change but not this."
"Not this," Edward agreed, suppressing his doubts in the intensity of the moment, but later in the half light of the urban night, it seemed to him that the walls, the house, the city, itself, were becoming permeable, that whatever had happened to him in the Mall might be only the beginning, that even his promises might mean little.
"Do you ever think of before?" he'd asked Dora. That was when they were standing near the dumpsters, and their misadventures in the basement and the elevator had created a kind of intimacy where such a question was possible. From some low place near the parking lot, frogs were calling, and overhead a group of nighthawks swooped after moths _ the sounds of before.
She had not answered for a moment, and Edward studied her broad, rather handsome face, wondering if he had committed some breach in etiquette. Then she said, "Lately, I have."
"And earlier?"
"Nothing. I remembered nothing. But just recently, I've had a few moments. That's how I recognized you right away. That look as if you're seeing two things at once and, of course, your talking so much about water. Some days," she added in a low tone, "I hear the tide turbines. I know it's just the AC; I work on the system every day, but some days the motors sound different."
"That must make for difficulties."
"I take a break and go shop for a pretty dress or blouse."
"I don't know if that would work for me," said Edward.
She laughed. "You never know. You see all kinds here."
"What does it mean, do you suppose? That all of a sudden, one remembers. But that's not quite accurate, is it? It's more that before starts to return."
"It may be different for everyone. But I think something starts to pull you back."
Edward thought about this idea in the dark bedroom. He regretted he had not questioned Dora further, had not asked who or what remained in her mind. Everything had seemed so simple before, when, of course, he had not envisioned anything like his present existence. He had come for Kara and imagined a swift return. Though he lingered here for her, there were obviously other claims on his affections and interests. The fact was that Edward was homesick, and the afternoon had showed him that he could return. Given the right circumstances, perhaps just the right degree of disorientation, he could. And Kara could, too, if only she wished. He glanced over toward where she slept, her fine hair dark in the faint cold glow of the streetlight. She talked in her sleep sometimes, unintelligible words freighted with heavy emotion, as if she had another, nocturnal life that would forever remain mysterious to him, as mysterious as much of her present life, even her relationships with her friends, her housemates, her theatrical colleagues. 
"They don't know, do they?" he asked the next morning. They'd waked up together, a little surprised and shy. The latter was soon remedied, but lying relaxed, watching her dress, Edward found himself waiting for her answer with some trepidation.
She turned, her milky shoulders framed by the curious Ancient garment that covered her breasts. "No. Why would they?"
"It is certainly a remarkable feature, isn't it?"
"But what difference would it make _ supposing they even believed me?"
"I guess. But _"
"What?"
"Most people return," he said. "We have a short life here _"
"We have as long as we want."
"Can we be hurt here? Can we die here? What do you think?"
"Don't, please," she said coming over and kneeling down on the edge of the mattress. "Can't we be happy? We live here and die here or before _ what difference does it make?"
"Philosophically," he began.
"I'm no philosopher," she said and started dancing in her underwear, her body supple with some inner music, her bare feet tapping a rhythm on the wood floor, her long hair flying. Just for a moment, Edward saw something that he had not fully understood, not even when he saw her on the stage. She was a creature of the imagination and ultimately where she went he might not be able to follow. She mimed joy and she became happy; she started to dance and she transformed the moment. This was what she needed, and as long as she had it _ a role, a dance, a song, a speech _ she was happy. She loved him, but in some essential way, this, not him, perhaps not any person, was what she needed.
Kara finished with a pirouette which went awry and stopped to correct the motion, finished, then flung her arms up with a smile.
Edward clapped. "Very good," he said, though now her skill made him a trifle sad.
"You don't mind, do you?" she asked. How quickly she picked up on his emotions.
He shrugged. "I'm a pretty straightforward person."
Her face changed. "You wouldn't tell them. You wouldn't, you couldn't, Edward." Very serious.
"Why would I?" he asked, but deep inside he knew why, and he found himself tempted.





	         			










Thirteen
	Edward walked Kara to The Gallows then took Broad Street toward the south end and the garage. The high sun was bright _ pleasantly warm to Edward, outright hot for the natives, who stood sweating at the bus stops or drove by closed up in air conditioning. Salsa and rap issued from some of the open vehicles and the windows of houses and apartments offered music gratis to the street. He liked the raucous bursts of melody and percussion, which reminded him of the buskers and the lively street life of the CC, fresh in his memory this morning. As he approached the white brick garage fronted with cars parked right up to the wire fence, he started to whistle an old tune. Edward anticipated some teasing from Hector, because this was the first time he'd stayed all night at Kara's, and laughter from the other fellows in the garage. That would be all right, too, on a happy morning. 
	The bays of the garage were open in the heat, and Edward walked down the short drive to where they stored more customer cars, a few junkers for parts, the dumpster and trash barrels, and a bench where the workers caught a quick smoke or ate the lunches they bought from the street vendor and the fast food shop. He had reached the stair up to the adjoining apartment, when he was struck by the silence. There should be the clank of tools on metal, the pneumatic whoosh of the tire machine, the clank of jacks, the sound of compressed air, or the rubbery bounce of a discarded tire on cement. No voices, either, only the salsa station favored by the staff, playing at top volume with an excitable gent yelling so fast in Old Spanish that he must have been paid by the word. All normal. Edward had his foot on the first step when he stopped. No, not normal. After years on the marsh, his hearing was acute, used to teasing out the sound of a hidden warbler from the ambient noise of the reeds, to detecting shifts in the wind, to picking up the distant sound of paddling or the creak of a solar. He heard a voice. Two. Half hidden under the radio. And where was Hombre, the guard dog who usually barked from his run at the back? Where were Carlos, Martin, and Hector, or, if they were inside, what were they doing? 
	With a sudden perception of trouble, Edward moved to the door that gave access from the work floor. He turned the handle carefully. Muy especial! cried the announcer over a burst of frenetic syncopation, then there was a thump, not the usual garage thump of rubber on cement or metal on rubber, but the sick, distinctive thump of something hard on flesh. Edward stepped inside. 
	They were over by the grease pit, two of them, wearing hats and dark glasses, and they had cornered Hector against the rack that held the motor oils and filters. One stood a little to the side with a stubby, black gun in his hand. The other was pounding Hector mercilessly. 
"Non sabe, non sabe," Hector gasped.
	Another thump.
	Edward looked around. A wrench, a grease gun. No good at this range. The compressor wasn't running for the paint sprayer. Then he saw the fire alarm, lifted a wrench and smashed the glass. He jerked the handle and dropped behind a cart loaded with trays of nuts, bolts, and washers, as a tremendous bang reverberated and a projectile whanged against the metal overhead. A shout and a crash below, the result of someone tumbling into the grease pit, and Edward launched the cart, sending it bouncing and rattling across the empty floor into something tall, solid, and furiously angry. In the collision, the gun flew in the general direction of the order desk, before the man _ Edward had only a glimpse of a white shirt, bare yellow arms, a black straw hat _ picked himself up and scuttled toward the open bay of the garage. Edward straightened up, too surprised even for fear. 
Someone was screaming from the grease pit, but not Hector. Hector had one eye swollen and his mouth was bleeding, but he was upright and on garage level and yelling, "Vamanos, vamanos!" He grabbed Edward's arm. "We gotta go now."
	To the side door where Hector ran his hand over the rack and palmed a key. Screams still coming from the grease pit, followed now by shots that rang off the metal roof. A frantic sprint to the back down a congested row of cars. Key in the lock of a black Lexus; doors open. "Get in, pronto," said Hector. Edward inside. "Belt," said Hector, who had the car started and in gear and out onto the street and peeled around the corner, before they heard the distant sound of a fire engine. Down Maple to Wyllys with the massive Victorians set on their wide lawns, past the round construction of the Civic Center, cranes and earth movers in attendance, out onto the highway, slow, slow for a truck with a smashed windshield, cop car beside it, flashers going _ Hector white faced, gripping the wheel _ then over the bridge, across the river Edward loved, gulls in a raft near a little backwater, and out, fast, far faster than the city traffic, the river behind them, the world dissolving.
	"You okay?"
	It was not the right time to discuss his peculiar situation, and the weakness of one of his co-worker's children suggested an excuse. "I get car sick," Edward said. 
	"Madre dios!"
	"Terribly." In truth, he did feel very squeamish.
	"Like my oldest," said Hector. "But not when you drive, right?"
	"I don't drive," said Edward.
	"Non. Not possible."
	"Yes, possible. I don't drive. We didn't have a motor - a car."
	Hector gave him a strange look.
	"What does it matter? You're driving just fine."
	"I need you to bring the car back," said Hector. "This is Se–or Obrigon's car. If it's not back, mucho problemos. Mucho."
	"So where are we going?"
	"Willimantic. Good friends will help me disappear, if you return the car."
	They were in greenery, that was all Edward knew, with a stream of motors around them and, across a divider of grass and trees, another line of approaching motors. Hector might have asked him to fly.
	"Watch," said Hector, "watch what I do. This is an automatic, no worries about shifting. You turn the key, you drive, you stop, you park, you turn the key again. Yes?"
	I'm dreaming, Edward thought. I am still at Kara's; it is very early morning, and this is one of those weird, coherent dreams one sometimes has. "Yes," he said.
	"Right pedal for gas, yes? Comprende? And left for brake." He touched it, slowing them for an instant, then back to the gas. "That's it. You read the signs, you signal this way" _ he showed Edward the lever on the steering wheel. "Wheel makes you go left or right, yes?"
	Why, Edward wondered, did he keep falling into these miseries with Hector? Kara was happy with her theatrical group, and Dora seemed to have found appropriate skilled work, while he was living hand to mouth, exposed to all the ills and dangers of Ancient Hartford. This life was a dream, it was fundamentally a dream, and perhaps the two women had simply dreamed good alternatives for themselves, while he, stumbling behind after Kara, had taken what came along. Maybe he could open the door now and step out and, instead of the dizzying ribbon of concrete, he'd be on a sidewalk somewhere or, better yet, setting off on a boat along a creek with his collecting gear and notebooks, doing the work he could do instead of driving virtually blind at enormous speed.
	"You can do this?" Hector asked. 
	Edward hesitated. He did not think he could do this at all.
	"You came in, a good thing, a kind thing. I am grateful, mucho, but now I have to leave."
	Edward looked at him. "What will you do?"
	"Further north or maybe out to the Midwest. I have a cousin there." 
	"I'm sorry."
	"They might have killed me," Hector said. "Bad men. Don't go to work today. I'll call Jorge for you and explain."
	Edward nodded, feeling increasingly queasy as Hector recounted the events of the morning _ Hombre sick, maybe poisoned; Carlos sent to take him to the vet; Martin off as usual on a parts run, and then the soft footsteps at the back of the garage. Edward didn't ask for details, knowing too well how easy it was for illegals, hidden precariously in plain sight, to become enmeshed with the city's low life. He tried, instead, to focus on the steering wheel, on Hector's hands making slight adjustments, on the movement of his right foot from the gas to the brake and back.
	Imagine, he told himself, I have to imagine something familiar here, houses, trees, hills; this is the Highground, so hills. I'm seeing hills and trees and houses, probably houses. 
	"Not far now," said Hector, "We're on the bypass."  
	Salvation came with that one word, for Edward suddenly remembered the Great Willimantic Bypass Race, a semi-legendary motor event, a last splurge of gasoline from around the time of the first Great Rising, an event commemorated _ wait, commemorated by _  by a bicycle and foot race, that was it. Every year on this very stretch. He'd read descriptions, and it now seemed to him that he'd been brought as a boy, a small boy, to one of the really big race meetings. He remembered crowds on a sunny day, clapping and shouting behind the ropes; the much-patched pavement shimmering in the heat with bare yellow spots where the weeds and grass had been carefully removed. Vendors, of course, wearing their high, distinctive hats, selling cakes, fruit, dried fish on little sticks, and lemon drinks. Musicians were playing, and there were jugglers and clowns and even actors, mounting little plays on stages before the tents. He remembered the runners with their flashing legs, their chests and faces gleaming with sweat, before it was time for the packs of cyclists in their bright silks to tear down the road, their derailleurs whirring as they free wheeled into the hairpin turns. Here. I've been here, he thought, I just need to remember, to look. And sure enough, though the close packed little houses lining the stretch were gone, replaced by trees only occasionally broken by the cleared ground of a farm, there was the double line of cement, up hill and down, but straight, mostly straight, rare here for roads, and ending, he was sure it did, in a hair pin turn that would be banked with blocks of marsh hay on race days to protect the cyclists. He began to feel better as the ribbon of gray, green, blue, and white resolved itself into something like a normal landscape. 
	"They hold the races here," he said without thinking. "Or used to."
	"Yeah?" Hector asked. "You would build up some speed on this stretch." He began talking about auto racing in Sonora and about some famous Mexican street racers. He knew how to set up a sweet running car for the street. "Not this one, though. You drive this one carefully, not a  scratch," he joked. 
	Edward could see Hector really did not believe that he was ignorant of motors.
	They went off an exit ramp, before Edward could confirm the sharp turn at the by-pass end and drove onto a commercial strip. "What do they do here?"
	"Used to be mills," said Hector. "Lots of industry. Not much now."
	This wasn't helpful, and Edward felt the queasiness returning, until Hector began proudly pointing out various little Mexican owned businesses, notable for the green, white, and red flags crossed with the stars and stripes. "Americans are lazy," he remarked. "Mexicans know how to work. Give us a couple generations, this place'll be big."
	Edward smiled painfully. It was true that the Highlands were destined to pick up population, but now the Risings came back into his mind. Even with serious floods within living memory, the Great Rising had been only another school topic. The world was the way it was, and all that really mattered was the present, the people one knew, the pleasures and problems of the moment. This is why people come back strange, he thought. One knows too much, one sees too many people one knows are doomed, or their children are doomed, or their grandchildren, and things better left abstract become real.
	"Here we are," said Hector, pulling into the side drive of a yellow wooden building with two stories and two apartments. "You'll know what to do."
Edward realized that Hector had been giving him more advice and instructions about the car _ all wasted; he remembered nothing.
Hector's friends came out, three stocky men wearing low slung jeans, work boots, and worn t-shirts. They had flat brown faces and straight black hair underneath their billed trucker's caps. After shaking hands with Hector, they greeted Edward warmly, patting him on the back, telling him he had been a bueno amigo, a valiente hombre. Edward's eyes kept sliding back to the black Lexus _ if only they knew how much more courage he would need for that. But like Hector, they could not conceive of an ignorance-based  fear of motors, and it was essential, they all agreed, that the car be returned. But not by them. 
Once they were all inside the yellow house with cans of beer in their hands and cigarettes going, Edward learned that this was a turf matter, involving the gang that Hector _ and by extension Edward, too, _ had become entangled with through the garage. Apparently the Kings were cutting into another gang's territory in some way involving motors and the auto business. More than that Edward was better off not knowing, but after years of Resurrectors and smugglers, he felt he got the picture.
All that afternoon, Hector and his friends sat around congenially. They sent out for a meal of fried chicken, and as they cracked open a few more beers, Edward grew more and more uneasy and disoriented. Yes, they were hard workers, but without much sense of urgency, loitering through the afternoon without any plan while he missed work and his life went to pot. The sky was beginning to darken in the east when Hector abruptly stood up to embrace Edward and clap him on the back. "Time to go," he said. "Rush hour is over." 
 Edward realized they had been waiting to give him an easier drive into the city. He asked them to back the car out onto the street for him and get it pointed in the right direction. This request made the others hesitate for the first time, and, his face anxious, Hector ran through all the directions again, while Edward nodded without paying entire attention. He was thinking that he had to imagine doing this, that he had to get the road side to solidify, that he had to think himself managing one of the solars in especially tricky water conditions.
 "Be safe," he said to Hector, "smooth water." That was not what people said here, but it was on his tongue before he realized. Then Hector's thin, taut face was at the window, saying good-bye, and Edward felt a brief, poignant sorrow. He raised his hand, released the brake as he'd been shown, and moved the gear to drive. The Lexus was beginning to move when he remembered to look, saw motors approaching, stabbed the brake, stalled the car. A rueful smile at Hector. Then he ran through the drill again and got properly into the street. 
He braked for the first light too soon and too violently, and at the second, too lightly and too late, but by some confluence of grace and luck, he negotiated the main street and got himself up onto the bypass, wide and blessedly nearly empty of traffic. True, he was unclear about how fast he should go. Forty seemed very quick to him, but when three cars and a truck screamed by him, he realized this was not as fast as was needed. Cautiously up to fifty, which, when the bypass ended, seemed way too fast for the many entering and leaving cars, the sudden turns, the winding road. He settled for thirty-five, ignoring the angry motorists who hovered inches from the back of Se–or Obrigon's car and roared past him whenever there was the slightest break in the oncoming traffic.
At first Edward responded by swinging wildly to his right, sending the wheels of the black Lexus jouncing onto the shoulder so that he thought more than once the car would leave the road altogether. Imagine, he kept saying to himself. Imagine the road is water, all smooth. Go gently on the wheel. A certain desperate inventiveness and the favor of the water gods got him to the interstate, where it was clear neither thirty-five nor fifty was going to be quick enough, and he was again tempted by the idea that all was illusion, that what he did made no difference, that he could stop or leave the road or smash into another motor and be left no worse off. But then he remembered Hector's swollen, bleeding face, and the sound of metal meeting flesh and knew he could not risk the experiment. 
Think instead of SurferKlub outings, of a board rigged with a sail, of speeding before the wind, of flying into the low red sun. The window on the driver's side was open and the rush of air with his increased speed aided the illusion of flying across the water miraculously shimmering ahead of him. He touched the brake nervously, knowing this was not a motor for liquid, but the other cars surged forward and, however distinct the water was, the cars never left dry land. An optical illusion, heat borne, one he could use. He was on the water, running a solar full out, a storm behind him, wind whistling around his ears, motors with their fumes long gone, trucks vanished, the CC and the dike appearing like a mirage from the marshland. He was there, he was almost there, he could smell the brackish waters of the marsh, hear a heron overhead in the evening sky, feel the way the solar shuddered in a sudden current or a strong cross wind: home. Suddenly red lights in front of him, a horn behind. Edward hit the gas, saw the lights racing back toward him and found the brake, halting with a swerve and a jounce just inches from the rear fender of a sizeable white truck embellished with a design of colossal cabbages, green beans, and strawberries. He wasn't home; he was almost at the bridge to Ancient Hartford and there was some sort of tie up. 
As if aware of his uncertainties, the car sat juddering and shaking like an overheated animal. When they were finally able to crawl forward a few yards, the engine stalled. Restart, hitch forward. It was an accident, he saw at last, with two of the sinister-looking troopers with the shiny boots and broad brimmed hats directing traffic. Edward hoped they would not ask for documents and was again tempted by the sight of the river. He could step out of the car, dodge around the other motors and head straight for the water, for the river and the willows he could see along the bank. In his nervousness about the troopers, he was distracted from his struggles with the car, and he was free of the tie up and racing across the bridge before he realized he was unclear about his route.
Instant nausea. The guard rails wavered, even the river seemed alien, caught as it was between the towers lining both banks. He followed the traffic, too uncertain of his steering to switch lanes, and found himself at a traffic light off the interstate. He glanced away from the road to the list of streets he had copied down at Hector's dictation _ Wyllys, that's what he was looking for. He missed one turn and had to circle a block, narrowly missing a cyclist and cutting off another car at a light. He was on the verge of stopping, just stopping, when he saw the white towers of the hospital, and, after many false starts and a wrong turn onto a one way street _ as a pedestrian, he had scarcely noticed such restrictions _ he found himself on Maple Street in light traffic, the world solid, the car reasonably responsive, though he had some problems with smooth braking and was inclined to go over the edge of curbs on turns. Not bad, though, and he was beginning to see the appeal of motors when he turned onto the street with the garage. Two blocks, just two blocks; he slowed down instinctively, fearful of jeopardizing his almost certain success, and spotted the yellow tape festooned on the fence and across the drive before he signaled to turn in. What was this?
Nowhere close to park. Edward drove around the block and then again, in the other direction in order to seize a parking spot on the opposite side of the street. He got out, his legs trembling with strain and his shirt soaked with sweat. Police Line, Do Not Cross was repeated in thick black letters down the length of the tape. Of course, the shots, the man screaming from the grease pit, who knows what else? Edward knew that he could hardly leave the car on the street. But while the back would be locked, he could pull into the drive, indicating to those who knew such things that Se–or Obrigon's black Lexus was under the protection of powerful forces best appeased. The sliding gate had been left as usual partially open to allow access to the apartment and to Juan-Jesœs, who did mysterious bits of business in the office after hours. 
Edward crossed the street and slid the gate back a few feet, then a few feet more _ that seemed right. Back to the car, which he now saw was under observation by a couple of women on a second story porch, a gaggle of knowing looking kids on skateboards and chopper bikes hitched up like a bad pair of pants, and a phlegmatic gent with a dark face and a six pack. Edward gave them a wave and a smile before restarting the car. His angle was wrong, that was the first thing. The only parking space had been almost directly across from the drive, and, though in theory Edward knew motors could back up, he felt reluctant to put his knowledge into practice. Round the block again, the shorter way this time, so that he was approaching from the garage side of the road. All good, no oncoming traffic, so he'd be able to swing out wide, as he now saw was going to be needed, to clear the posts. 
He misjudged the gap and the angle the first time. There was nothing for it but to risk the R on the gear box and slide back into the street. A horn somewhere nearby caused Edward to throw the gear back into drive just as a boy balanced on the rear wheel of his bike zoomed across the sidewalk in front of him. Edward lifted his foot, missed the brake, jerked the wheel; there was a clank on the left fender as it touched the rear of the bike and spun the boy howling onto the cement, followed by a violent scraping and crunching as the car's whole right quarter panel made contact with the post and the fence. Trailing a length of police tape, the Lexus rolled forward well into the drive before Edward got it stopped. He turned the key, threw open the door, felt the car rolling, and with a frantic grab, found the brake.
"Are you all right?" he called to the boy, who had a nasty scrape on one bare calf. He'd gotten his bike upright, ready to leave _ and probably would have _ if the neighbors, who, Edward was sure, had kept their ears closed during the mysterious noises of the morning, had not suddenly turned officious. Carlos will have to see a doctor. He might have broken something. Where was the insurance card? And your license? This to Edward. Anyone can see you can't drive. And, most ominously, Isn't that Se–or Obrigon's car?
Edward defended himself as vigorously as he could, while Carlos, a light brown skinned boy with eyes between blue and green and long thick, starlet's eyelashes, put on an increasingly pathetic look and allowed the women to fuss over his scraped leg. I was going so slowly. Everyone on the street could see I was trying to pull in _ you were all watching. You saw the boy came right in front of me. The volume rose all round; content to be the center of attention, the treacherous Carlos began to snivel, and things had progressed as far as threats to summon the police, before Edward had the inspiration to say he would go get his license. He had left it in his jacket. "Yes, yes, all the documents," he said.
"Insurance card?" the six pack owner asked. "Better bring your insurance card."
Edward assured them that he would. He locked the car, keys inside, as he went by. "See, I'm not going any where." Another smile.  He ignored a length of warning tape to climb the stair to the second floor, stripped a third tape off the door and entered the apartment. He grabbed the heavy plastic carrier that he had brought for his extra pants and shirts, stuck his toothbrush, comb and sandals on top, added his Petersen's Field Guide to Eastern Birds, and after a quick look around, went straight to the toilet window and pulled out the screen. There was just a three or four foot drop to a shed roof below, and Edward figured that, while the neighbors were watching the stair, he could get himself a few blocks away and out of sight. 
	

	

			 Fourteen

	Leaving nosey garage neighbors, squads of marauding children, and hyperactive dogs behind him, Edward approached Kara's house, already deep in the shade of the big maples. Music and voices floated from the open windows, and Matt, the resident poet and smoker, was sitting out with a cigarette on the porch. He raised a lazy hand when he saw Edward with his bundle of clothing. "Evening, Eduardo. You're off early."
	"Off, period," said Edward. "Kara home?"
	"Not yet. Everyone else is in residence."
	Edward put down his bundle and sat uncertainly on the lower step. "I may need a favor."
	"What friends are for." Despite his vocation, Matt was singularly laconic.
	"I guess. I've had to leave my apartment."
	Matt raised his eyebrows. "We've all been there," he said. "Troubles with the rent or the roommate?"
	"This was more like troubles with the Latin Kings."
	 "What an interesting life you have, Eduardo."
	"You wouldn't believe," Edward said honestly. "One of those friend of a friend troubles that just spread like swamp water."
	 "So crash here for a while. Do your share of the work and pitch in for the costs. We'd have to vote, but I don't think anyone will mind."
	"That's kind. Thanks."
	Matt finished up the last drag of his cigarette and rubbed out the stub on the pavement. "You can help me right now. I'm doing the dinner magic tonight."
	That's where he was when Kara came home, grating cheese for scalloped potatoes, while Matt fussed out back over the grill for some hotdogs and burgers. It was funny _ the house was noisy, at least two stereos going; Andrew and John in the drive shooting baskets despite the heat, Meghan noodling at a difficult passage on her flute, the usual street noises of neighbors' dogs and passing cars _ yet Edward heard her voice with perfect clarity, as if everything else were insubstantial. Her voice and another, low enough to be male. Edward turned from the table, heard a car door shut, her steps on the porch, at the front door, starting up the stair.  "You got company," Meghan called from the front room. Kara's voice again, before her steps in the hall.
	"Hi," said Edward.
	"I thought you were at work." 
	"Minor disaster. I need a place to stay for a couple days. Hide out,   actually." He shrugged apologetically.
	"What happened?" Concern in her voice which before, he thought, had registered surprise and something else he couldn't quite define.
	He gave her an edited account. Hector's beating, their retreat to Willimantic, his own heroics and near disastrous ending with the car. The latter captured Kara's imagination, and once they were upstairs in her room, sorting out a place for his stuff, she asked about driving. 
	"It's really not too hard, then? I mean, you managed all that way. Somewhere you'd never been."
	Edward gave a tight smile. She must know the same sense of dissolution, the way the world wavered and everything became uncertain, even if she wouldn't admit it.
	"I was a bit lucky, but yes, it can be done."
	"I want to learn and I'm going to soon. I've been saving my money for lessons, but Sam has offered to teach me."
	"Why bother when you have the bus? And friends. You got a lift home, didn't you?"
	She didn't take him up on this _ an omission he noticed. "Everyone drives here. A car is almost a necessity. I can get a license. So could you."
	He looked away, tempted to press the issue but reluctant, too, when they had been so happy only the night before. "The speed is incredible," he said. "Out on the interstate."
	"But you did it," said Kara. "You managed. And now you're safe. You're safe here." She put her arms around him, and the scalloped potatoes would have dried up and burned if John, who was always hungry, hadn't opened the oven and rescued them. 
So there was a way for them to be happy, though all felicity was unstable, and his precarious personal life was bound up with Kara's in a way he had once desired and now partly resented. There were other uncertainties, too, as he discovered when he appeared in his white shirt and black pants, togged out for bus boy duty at the restaurant. He hadn't been working more than five minutes before Jorge bustled in from his back office. "Edward, a moment, please." The manager's round, usually cheerful face was tense and flushed, and when Edward followed him into the dark, cluttered office, he shut the door behind them. 
"I'm sorry about yesterday," Edward said. "But Hector said he'd call and explain to you."
"Oh, yes, Hector called. I have no problem with yesterday. It is today and tomorrow I worry about, Edward. Hector had no right to involve you _ I know, I know, friends." He waved a pudgy hand as if to dispel such complications. "But you can't work here. They'll know who you are soon, if they don't already, and I can't afford trouble. It takes so little trouble to ruin a restaurant."
Edward sat still, waiting for some other proposal, for some time frame, to be told stay out for a day, a week; to move to one of the other restaurants in the city.
Jorge looked unhappy. "I hate to do this, but you have to leave _ permanently. I can't afford trouble_ especially when you have no papers." His shrug encompassed not only Edward but a number of other undocumented employees.
"I'm fired?" He had not expected that, and it seemed incredible to Edward that a city bristling with weapons should be so fearful. Where were the police? Where was the pride in good order?
"I'll pay you for this week," Jorge said, moving to his desk. "I like Hector, too. He's a good man in a bad situation. Making the best of life like the rest of us, right?"
"Yes," said Edward. As Jorge counted out some bills, he looked around at the posters on the walls: the high cliffs at Acapulco, the great temple at Teotihuac‡n, the floating flower market, all places of beauty and drama, yet Jorge had left them behind. We have things in common, Edward thought, we're living here and also in memory.
"Do you know anyone who needs a good bus boy? I could wait tables, too, you know." With sudden bitterness, Edward realized that promotion, a decent wage, even a temporary success had been his unvoiced hope. 
Jorge patted his shoulder. "You could do anything you wanted with papers. Remember that. I will ask around, Edward. But it won't be in Hartford. Hartford's no good for now. You'll need to look elsewhere." 
His heart sank at that. Hartford was the one place he could not leave, and a few days later Edward again found himself near the station, hoping for day work. He had closed his ears to Kara's many suggestions about false numbers and papers, deceptions of varying ingenuity and expense. And he was right, he thought, looking around him in the still cool and shadowed morning. For what was this but illusion, the crowd of ill dressed, badly fed men, the shiny suburban pickups of the contractors, the tattered bills that passed from one hand to the other, symbols simultaneously of wealth and poverty? 
There were moments when he seemed to see through even the dark bricks and mortar of the station building, when the vast gray pylons of the interstate and the glassy towers of the skyline resolved themselves back into the high walls of the dike, the bright awnings and greenery of the houses, the great stretches of marsh and river. These moments of dual perception made him stubborn with Kara and careless of danger. On days when he did not get a few hours of construction or landscaping work, he checked the local restaurants, but without Hector's contacts he found it harder to get in the door, and the very perfection of his Ancient English made his lack of papers seem more, rather than less, sinister.
Then a stroke of luck. A nursery manager came by desperate for workers to handle lawn turf and manage shrubs for the upcoming fall planting season. Edward was taken on with a promise of three weeks work at a good wage and the hint of a permanent job. Out in the sun and air, he worked hard and efficiently, and when he saw that the irrigation system was badly laid out, he suggested a water saving plan.
Tom, the manager, seemed delighted, but Edward did not get a check at the end of the week. "You started on a Tuesday," Tom said. He had a heavy red face topped with prematurely white curly hair and a thick, large boned frame. "Book keeping can't cut checks less than a week's work. Damn accountants," he said, as if he were helpless before their rules. When Edward complained that left him no money for food, Tom opened his wallet and handed him a pair of twenties.
"Best I can do at the moment," he said.
Edward wondered about that, given the big crew working at the sod farm and the considerable number of day laborers and horticulturalists, but he pocketed the money. 
"Next Friday for sure," said Tom.
Edward thought that there were other nurseries, though this one was attractive, being just south of the city and within his old precincts as marsh keeper. He had told himself that on the way in Tom's big truck with the extra seat behind the driver. I've been here in a solar, I've heard the wind through the reeds. But he had managed to Willimantic and back; there were other growers; he had skills; he just had to be patient and travel outwards one step at a time. Besides, he found the work congenial. He liked working with plants and water systems, and he didn't doubt his abilities would be recognized.
The next Friday, Edward stopped work a few minutes early to get over to the office. He had noticed Tom's car _ not the truck, but the big Suburban he took home _ parked waiting by the office door and had an uneasy feeling. 
"Yes?" asked Tom, looking up from his long desk with the little baskets for mail and invoices and the big complicated looking telephone. 
"I need my pay," said Edward. And waited.
"I don't think checks have come over from bookkeeping just yet. We may have to wait until Monday _ you know, Celia's been out this week." He reached into his pocket for some loose bills. "Tide you over," he said. "I'll drop you on my way."
He stood up, easy and confident, ready to brush by Edward and all complaints. Something in his casual tone and sideways glance told Edward that he would not be paid, that Tom had never intended to pay him, that the manager had cheated others before. There was a moment of stillness between them when Edward thought, this man has gotten fat on the hunger of my friends, on the labor of folk like Hector and Maria and the day workers at the station, before his anger exploded. The nursery owner was taller and outweighed Edward by thirty pounds, but he grabbed the front of Tom's shirt and, catching him by surprise, banged him against the metal bookcase holding the office's records.
"I want my money. I've worked two weeks for you, ten hours a day; I fixed your stupid leaking irrigation system."
"Hey," said Tom. "Take your fucking hands off me." There was a distinct wheeze in his voice that Edward detected. Though big, Tom was not as strong as he looked, and Edward hit him hard, low in the gut and again in the center of his chest, one, two. Gasping, Tom staggered toward the phone, but Edward swept the console off the desk and picked up the one heavy thing in sight, a plaque honoring Tom Rortson for Services to the Nursery Community. He swung it at Tom's head, the sharp metal base catching him above the temple and sending him to the floor. 
"Pay me," Edward shouted. "I'm not your usual illegal. You mess with me, they'll be washing you away."
 "Who's going to believe you?" the nurseryman gasped. He had one hand on the desk and hauled himself, swearing, up to a sitting position. "You'll be up for assault. You'll be in jail." 
"But you'll be dead." Shaking with fury and almost beyond reason, Edward was ready to strike again, when Tom wiped his hand across his forehead and saw blood dripping down his fingers. His look of surprise, as if he'd undergone one of those familiar rearrangements of reality, brought Edward back from some interior edge. He lowered the plaque a fraction, and Tom was smart enough to hold up one hand. Leaning against the desk for support, he opened his wallet and counted out several hundred dollars. Edward folded the bills up and put them in his pocket. He walked to the door, dropped the plaque on the floor, and kicked it back across the room. 
Tom's voice was hoarse with rage, behind him. 
Edward made one of the obscene gestures Hector favored, then he was outside, passing the neat rows of balled, burlap-wrapped conifers, the potted rhodies and azaleas; the hopeful sapling maples, honey locusts, flowering crabs; the cement bird baths, the elves and angels, and the glass gazing globes that reflected the edge of the nursery yard where, his heart hammering, his shirt sticking to his back and chest, he found anger like an aura enclosing the world. Someone called to him; Edward didn't answer. He had to leave straight away, because if he saw Tom again, if Tom tried anything with him, it would be, disastrous. He was on the street, walking toward the highway, before he realized that he might have killed the nursery manager. He might have, not necessarily meaning to, but not necessarily regretting it, either, for Tom was the worst kind of bully and cheat. There had been a moment, the moment that he picked up the plaque, right then with anger at the flood tide, when he might have crossed the frontier to an unknown land more dangerous than even Ancient Hartford. I can't stay here, Edward thought. 
That evening he told Kara, "I can't live this way. It's doing terrible things to me. I want to go back." He had just come out of the shower with his towel still around his shoulders. He'd noticed as he was washing himself that the knuckles of his right hand were swollen. He had hit Tom that hard. 
"You can't just go back _ like that," she said. "It's not like buying a ticket." She gave a nervous little laugh. "As if you could. Regular flights to the Future."
"You're happy here, so it's maybe not on your mind _ or in your vision."
"What do you mean?"
"There are moments when the _ when whatever there is between before and after _ gets thin for me. When I hear the wind coming across the marsh, when I can almost see the dike behind the towers and the interstate. That's what I mean, and the only thing keeping me back is you. I don't want to leave you behind. Twice it's almost happened. Almost. The next time I'm afraid it will. I'll be gone, and I don't think I can come back a second time."
"You're unhappy with your work," she said. "So it's natural for you to remember _ you had a good job before. And you could again, Edward, if you weren't so stubborn about papers. No one's totally honest here. They don't care. They expect people to lie to get work. It's no big deal."
"It's more than work," he said. "It's everything. Us, too. We're not the same as we were."
At this her voice rose with exasperation, as if he had missed something obvious. "I came to be different, Edward. I thought you knew that. I came because I was afraid all the time, because I was suffocating."
"And was I part of that? Is that what you're telling me? I shouldn't have left my folks and my friends and my work?"
"You love me," said Kara. "I know that. And I want us to be happy here. And we can be. You just have to show more initiative. What are you doing working day labor with your education? That's all I'm saying."
But she hadn't said the key thing. She hadn't said, yes, you made a mistake or no, you did the right thing. Her face was uneasy and her eyes slid away from him. Kara was a gentle person, Edward knew, very averse to hurting others. He was afraid that made her deceitful at times. 
He pulled on his clothes and went straight downstairs. Kara followed a few minutes later; it was their night for dinner prep. He was cutting up a cabbage, slicing through the thick, pale head with a steady crunch, when he told her, "I could have killed a man today."
"Edward!"
"I'm serious. He didn't want to pay me. That's what some of these owners and contractors do. Hire illegals, get the work out of them, then cheat them. I hit him."
"With so many guns here, you're lucky you weren't shot! Or arrested!"
"I picked up this thing on his desk. Some sort of honorary plaque, but heavy. I hit him in the head with it. A few inches lower _ do you hear what I'm saying, Kara? _ I could have killed him. Over a few hundred dollars. A man I hardly knew could have died for a few hundred dollars. I'm becoming a different person and not a better one, either."
"Maybe then you should go back," Kara said. Her voice was sad. "Maybe you should." 
"And will you come?" 
She didn't answer.
"Will you come, Kara, will you?"
"Hey, guys!" Sam appeared in the doorway. "What's with the long faces? I smell chili, don't I? You don't know how lucky you are," she said to Kara, "that Ed's a demon cook."
"How's everything?" Edward asked. His face felt stiff. It was unreal to be discussing a near homicide and chatting with the ebullient Sam almost simultaneously.
"Everything is good. Well, except for the frozen shoulder I'm working on. Stretching, heat, exercise, cold _ patient full of complaints at every stage."
"You smell of chlorine," said Kara, who had recovered her voice.
"Mile and a half in the pool. Healthy body, dirty mind." She grabbed a handful of the raw cabbage and crunched it noisily before she started taking plates out of the cupboard to set the table. John arrived next with his Ipod in his ears and treated them to some new dance moves that amused Meghan, who came in with the score of some difficult new piece. Pretty soon the dining room was full and food on the table and most of them talking at once, while Edward and Kara looked uneasily at each other, his question still hanging between them.
















 


				 Fifteen
	Edward had no work, but instead of calling Jorge again or chancing the rail station hiring point or risking a bus ride west to other eating houses, he decided to spend the day on his own. He still had a few dollars left from his ill-fated nursery job, and he treated himself to a leisurely breakfast, then set off for Pope Park with the idea of a possible detour to the river. Accustomed to the subtle seasonal shifts of the CC, he detected hints of autumn in a few leaves turning brown at the edges or yellowing at the center, and noticed the faint reddish death flush on one small swamp maple. Already there was a different feel to the wind, as if it had turned in some fundamental direction; soon there would be a melancholy angle to the afternoon light, heralding the cold fall season. 
	Although his funds were rapidly being depleted, Edward was almost beyond worry. He'd been concerned about Tom, envisioning a visit from the police with charges and dangers of some new and humiliating sort, but when nothing happened, he'd grown fatalistic. He'd get work or he wouldn't; he'd remain and survive or he'd find himself back home. Both seemed beyond his control. As for the papers and documents that everyone obsessed about, Edward was not only indifferent but fearful. The notion of a permanent residency card _ the very words seemed a prophesy_ stirred a dread that he would never return home.
	So he'd deceived Kara, getting up early and pushing off before breakfast, only to loiter for a couple of hours with coffee and the local paper. When he found himself near the Gallows in early afternoon, he didn't stop for a sandwich, because he didn't want Kara to know he'd wasted the whole morning _ ammunition for their next argument. In fact, though she didn't know this, he hadn't worked more than a day or two in several weeks. He was becoming good at filling his days with idleness and becoming worse, he was afraid, at resisting the temptations of easy cash that flowed toward men with not enough money and too much time on their hands. 
	He avoided the cafŽ by cutting through campus to one of the pizza joints on New Britain. Afterwards when he found himself sitting out under a tree within sight of the Gallows, he realized that this had been the plan all along: to watch and wait for Kara. This was what he wanted to do, and hidden further yet in the devious recesses of his mind was the notion that he could somehow end the ambiguities between them, that somehow today he could settle their future and draw her back where she belonged. Certainly that would be worth a day of his time.
	Around four-thirty a white Honda parked near the Gallows, the driver cutting forward and back in a complex maneuver to work the motor between two larger parked cars. Austin, Kara's document savvy friend, favored customer at the Gallows, and theatrical enthusiast, got out. Edward recognized him even from the distance by his height and his wide shoulders, and, more, by a certain sinking sensation that indicated the precariousness of his own hopes. Austin locked the car carefully, waved to a passing motorist, and went into the cafŽ. Edward stood up, too restless to sit. 
	Though he was tempted to go straight to the Gallows and have it out with Austin, he was deterred by uncertainty over what that 'it' might be. The man was entitled to eat at the cafŽ, to visit with the staff, to pass on the latest theatrical gossip to his friend, possibly his close friend, Kara Wistley. I might go on in, see how things stand, Edward thought, but he was afraid that his presence might change things for the worst. At the very least, Kara would realize that he was out of work. 
	Besides, Austin might reappear within minutes, a bag of the Gallows' toothsome brownies or feathery scones in hand. He might. Or with a play script tucked under his arm. Something he'd previously loaned Kara. That was very possible. It might even be that, concerned as she was, Kara had asked Austin to stop by to talk about papers; a difficulty there, to be  sure, but better than the alternatives. Edward sat back down and arranged himself so that some shrubbery blocked the view from the cafŽ. He did not want to spy on her, or, rather, he did not want her to know that he was.
	Twenty minutes passed. Long enough for Austin to have bought a cappuccino or a lattŽ or maybe one of the fancy teas, though somehow Edward did not have him pegged for a tea drinker. A cappuccino, then, Kara or Meghan levering the big brass machine to produce the whoosh of hot milk, followed by the ritual presentation of the finished drink to accompany the consumption of one of the Gallows' baked treats. Or maybe a sandwich. It was getting late, clean-up time, really, but for a steady customer accommodation could be made. Edward saw the whole thing so clearly: the cutting of one of the handsome loaves of bread, the slicing of cheese and tomatoes, the addition of lettuce _ or maybe even some fried bacon. Austin would want something substantial, and the women would oblige. Twenty minutes for all that? Yes, he thought so.
	Five o'clock came. Edward thought, though at the distance he couldn't be sure, that he saw the shade come down, the Open sign flipped to Closed, but maybe not. Maybe his watch was fast; it was a very cheap one. He should start his walk back _ but suppose Austin passed him, offered him a lift. Suppose Kara had left by the rear door, suppose he caught up with her halfway across the shortcut through the college. He would wait; he would go. He stood up just as the door of the Gallows opened and Austin came out with Kara. He held the screen for her and she locked up. The easy way she took his arm wrung Edward's heart. We were like that once, he thought. Just like that. She relied on me and now she relies on him. It was perfectly plain. He could see her smiling; his imagination supplied her laugh at some little joke between them. She got into the car. Edward did not wait to witness Austin's finesse with the motor. He crossed the road, almost running, and disappeared down the steep steps to Zion Street before they pulled away.
	Edward spend the last of his money on beer at a tavern, dominated by a large tv showing a soccer match with the sound off so that the drinkers could descend further into the lugubrious Old Spanish songs on the stereo. He was in no very good mood when he left, and the walk back to Kara's building, which would usually have put his mind at ease, did nothing for his jangled nerves and sour temper. I have been a fool, he thought. Kara was perfectly happy before I came. She enjoys what she is doing; she might even make a great success as an actor. 
And why not? If she could make decent sandwiches and excellent pastries, why not achieve distinction on the stage, even the screen? That hope, he was sure, was behind her desire to drive. She wanted to go to New York, the great, and for Edward, almost unimaginable city, where she would still have the occasional bad moments when her head hurt or the world wavered or something of home haunted her mind, but where, he understood now, by some force of will or, more likely, of imagination, she would reshape her life. He believed she could do that for a while. And possibly, one day near in the future _ or far _ maybe very far, when she was old and fat and in some sort of nursing care, she would simply vanish. Or die. Maybe a complete existence here was possible, maybe worlds are permeable. Maybe life was not as linear as was thought. 
	His mind thus in turmoil, fueled equally by Tecates and philosophy, Edward walked to Kara's house, where he found her and Austin sitting in the dark, cluttered living room with the rest. John, allergic to cookery, had bought Chinese take away, and it appeared that Austin was consuming Edward's portion. "Oh, Edward," Kara said, surprised and maybe not overly happy, "I thought you were at work."
	He sat down heavily in one of the chairs. "No," he said. 
	She handed over a container with rice and vegetables. "There's plenty for everyone."
	"Is there?" He picked at the glutinous rice with the scallions, water chestnuts, and bok choy. Normally he liked Chinese food. This tasted like paper. "I'd like to talk to you," he said. "Privately."
	The quick look she gave Austin and his almost imperceptible shake of the head told Edward all he wanted to know, but he persisted. "Just for a moment."
	"We're all friends here," Austin said. His voice was a low rumble, suggesting a certain heaviness of personality, a potential threat. I know him, Edward thought, I know him from before _ somewhere. Where he was no friend of mine. But memory refused him.
	"A moment, Kara."
	"There's no point, Edward," she said, and glanced at Austin for support. "I never wanted to hurt your feelings, but things aren't working out. It's not Austin's fault," she added quickly. "It's not like that at all."
	"What is it like? I'm having trouble imagining."
	"Kara doesn't have to answer to you," Austin said. His voice had risen, and Sam tried to defuse the situation. 
	"Guys, let's just finish dinner," she said. 
	"Yeah, no food fights. We know things have been tough for you lately," John said to Edward.
	He ignored these appeals. "You don't understand the situation. Especially you." This to Austin. "Kara and I don't belong here. We really don't. We're on a sort of metaphysical extended visa _ you won't have heard of that." He caught Kara's eye.	
"Don't Edward. Please don't. You promised."
	"Either they're not completely real, Kara, or we're not. But it's all an illusion, one way or the other."
	"Don't do this," she cried, stricken. "How can you do this? Don't listen to him. I've told you, I explained to you, didn't I, that Edward has these episodes, these moments of absence? Like in the mall. You remember, Sam."
	"And did you tell them I only came back for you? Did you tell them that?" he asked "You wouldn't believe how far I came for her." He could see their faces and knew they wouldn't. "You can't recognize that _ or us _ or what we are _ but it's the truth that we're only here on temporary loan. One day I'll be gone, like so." He snapped his fingers. "Afterwards, you'll be hard pressed to remember you ever knew me. And if you give her your heart, you'll see," he added to Austin. "She'll be gone, too, into thin air. Please, Kara, come with me now. You can only hurt these people and break my heart."
	She started to cry. "It's not true; none of this is true," she whispered between sobs. 
"Please, Kara. I  know you love it here, but it isn't right. We've upset the natural order of things. You can't become a famous actor here or whatever it is you want." 
"I can and I will," she said, suddenly angry and defiant. "You can't stop me."
Austin stood up at this and put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but Edward thought he looked uneasy and felt regret. What have I done, what have I done to Kara? "I love you," he said as his excuse. "I know you and know what you are and I still love you _ can you say the same for anyone else? Can you?" He reached for her hand. "We can be gone, we can be gone in a minute."
"No," she said. "No, I'm sorry. I loved you but I'm never going back. Never, never."
"Please, Kara!" He drew her from the sofa and for an instant, for a particle of an instant, he thought that he had won, that he could lead her to the door, to the porch, to the street, where, he was convinced, they would hear the sound of blackbirds gathering and the soft sloughing of a watery wind off the marsh. Then there was a scuffle, Sam taking Kara's other arm, assuring her she needn't go anywhere she didn't want to, and Austin, bulky in front of him, and an ineffectual punch thrown _ Edward much the worse for the Tecates and smaller in any case _ before he was outside on the porch with the screen door banging behind him. He looked back through the big living room window at Kara, white faced in the shadows, one hand stretched out to him, in appeal, in farewell, and knew beyond any shadow of doubt that this was good-bye.


Across the twilight city, broke and despairing _ no better off than the morning he'd arrived, worse, really, because he had been so hopeful then, so confident of finding Kara and so foolishly sure that all would be well once he did. Down Broad Street, Edward could see the big newspaper building and the arc of the interstate and was surprised at their continued existence. It had been in the back of his mind that everything would be resolved tonight, and now, instead, he found himself hung over with Tecates and regrets, with nothing but disappointment here and no chance of home, either. For this he had left his parents, his friends, his job, the marsh, everything he loved in life, and, tempted by the hypnotic stream of traffic, he had an impulse toward recklessness. One quick step into the street and he would know the precise degree of present reality and whether he was invulnerable or not. Edward stood for a moment, judging the speed of the cars, then, recovering himself, doubled back to climb over the guardrail near the ramp. He made his way below the interstate to Joseph's plastic draped nest.
"Long time, no see," said the old man, who gave him a shrewd glance. "You're looking the worse for wear. You haven't thought to bring some of the damage with you?" There was a hopeful note in his voice.
Edward sat down beside him and shook his head. "Sorry. I haven't a penny," he said. "I've got to go home.
"Ah, home is where the heart is."
"Huh," said Edward bitterly. "My heart is here with Kara but I can't stay any longer."
Joseph nodded silently, and, as the pink sky faded and the starlings whirled in their thousands to roost overhead, Edward told him the story. 
"It's not given us to save others," Joseph said when he was finished. "Wisdom of the tribe: it can't be done. Though good men have been tempted," he added kindly. 
"I betrayed her," Edward said. "I told."
"Ahh _ they won't believe you, not for more than a minute or two. The world is so crazy here most anything can be digested and ignored."
There was that. Many strange things were believed, but most of them had the sanction of the papers, the tv, the radio. His word alone might not be enough for Sam and Austin and their friends; he hoped not. "I thought I would be home by now," Edward said after a few minutes. Full dark had come and the lights of the interstate formed yellow and red and blue-white streams. "Maybe I'm stuck here permanently. Maybe Kara will go back and I'll be left behind."
"Go back to where you came in," Joseph suggested. "Go back to the same place."
"And if not?"
"Don't think that. Trust to hope and imagination."
"Kara has imagined a life for herself."
"Do the same," said Joseph.
Edward's head was pounding. He did not metabolize alcohol well and his imagination had atrophied. He stretched out on one of Joseph's plastic sheets. "Can I stay here for a little while?"
"As my honored guest," said the old man. "But morning, get up early. Since you come in early that will be your best bet." He hunched himself into one of his blankets and fell asleep.
Edward closed his eyes against the stream of lights. He could hear the old man's hoarse breathing, the faint rustle of the birds and the endless hum of the interstate. When he opened his eyes again, the morning star winked through a chink in the plastic. The traffic sound had dropped; the birds were asleep. Edward stood up, his mouth sour and chalky, his head gently throbbing. He looked down at the old man, wrapped as in a shroud, asleep in the cold light. To the extent he could trust anyone here, he felt he could trust Joseph; he would take his advice.
"Good-bye, Joseph," he said softly. He slipped through the drapes to the guardrail. He waited until a monster truck roared past and a smaller pickup, then there was a break and he stepped over the rail and crossed all four eastbound lanes to reach the median. Lighter to the east. He waited again, started across but stepped back quickly. Unfamiliar with motors, he had misjudged an oncoming vehicle. I could die here, Edward thought. It's true. I could. This, too, is real, to a point. 
He stood uncertainly for a few minutes, watching the paired white lights of cars advance, watching the billboard sized trucks lit, it seemed, on every surface. Then nothing for a moment but pinpoint sized lights advancing over the bridge. Edward stepped onto the road way and sprinted across. He walked along the gritty verge just outside the guardrail. Crossed an entrance ramp, then an exit ramp. Not the right one, he didn't think, though it was hard to tell in the artificial light. Next one? Yes, he recognized the name. Sisson. Sisson. And now in the street light and the pale morning, he recognized the steep slope below, slick with ice at his arrival, and the little bent shrub that had kept him from falling into traffic.   
Right here, he thought, as he walked down the ramp. Right here. I was walking down the Raised Road, looking east, where the storm was coming, where the morning is coming. He heard a horn behind him, the shudder of the road with the weight of the vehicle and turned to see the truck and jumped toward the guard rail, flat out, desperate to reach the slope, the ground, safety, and landed with a sick thud as the wind of the motor's passing sounded below the inky morning shadow of the dike.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
"Kara!" he shouted into the darkness, "Kara, Kara!" And then he remembered nothing more.

				 











 Sixteen

Edward walked home in the dawn. He felt shaky on the dike's steep and slippery steps, and he had a dizzy moment at the top, looking east toward golden bands below a raft of slate colored clouds bulging with rain. The air was damp on his skin and a faint smell of wood smoke wafted from the watermen's district along the river. There was the raised road, palely bisecting the city, and the warren of apartments with their roof gardens. The bright awnings were furled; the empty streets, dark with only faint points of light where the reflectors caught the dawn. Behind him, the marsh still lay with the night, but its gray shadows were fading into the pale greens and buffs of day. A vulture swept overhead and a file of snowy egrets flapped across the northern quarter: He was home, and he felt relief and sadness in equal measure. He saw again what he loved and sensed, rather than remembered, all that was lost. Already Ancient Hartford seemed no more than a dream of motors and noise, of towers and glass and gas tinged air, of people, so many people, of Kara. He wiped his eyes and started down the steps.
Returned Absences were supposed to report to the nearest Safetypoint. That was the drill. He'd insisted on it when he'd found that fellow in the marsh near, very near, Edward realized, where he, himself, had just returned. The operating procedure for Absence was to collect as much information as soon as possible, but Edward realized that was nonsense. What could he say, what could he tell them? He'd been Absent, gone, missing, oblivious; he didn't want to explain anything; he wanted to go home. 
The first shutters were opening in the stalls under the pylons; he heard the rattle and creak of a fisher's cart coming from the river. The vegetable women who tended the raised plots on the edge of the marsh would soon be wheeling their laden bicycles along the side of the Rail, and Jonas and his other friends would be eating quick breakfasts and heading out for the solars. If I can just get on a boat, I'll be all right, Edward thought. He was tempted to go straight to the Warden's office, but it was still early, and there would be something unseemly about showing up without even his uniform and kit after all this time. They would want him to visit the SafetyMen, too, and he would not have the excuse of time and pressing work. It would be better to show at punch-in time with badge and kit and proper marsh gear, ready to step into the boat and head out. He could almost feel the motion of the water, could almost see the tall reeds parting as his vessel nosed into a channel. To be there was almost a physical need, and he bestirred himself to get down the steps and into the narrow _ so narrow! _ streets.
A block, two blocks. At the corner of Twain he saw Kara's building in the distance. Was it possible that she, too, was home? Was it? His heart beat faster and he ran to the lobby. But her name was gone from the listing and there was a new name on the plate for her apartment. He wondered, half panicked, if he had somehow entered the wrong door, mistaken her apartment, but no, there was the odd sculptured fish, symbol of the CC, and the purple and brown mosaic let into the cement floor, and the curly iron railing of the stair. This was the apartment for sure and Kara was still Absent. 
Outside, the sun was fully up, and the day already felt warm after his time in the cooler ancient city. Edward realized that he would have to adjust anew to Kara's absence; she would not be on the street, hurrying toward the school nor dancing with him in the Circles, nor beside him in the twilight on the roof garden. She was lost, though he had come close to success. He had found her, he knew he had, and they had been planning to return _ yet here, he felt a pang; at some level he remembered that had not been the case, that he had failed to persuade her, that she had not loved him quite enough. He walked across Morgan to his own apartment and checked the name plates as soon as he entered the lobby: Edward Nempf in the familiar italics. His apartment was safe.
Upstairs. He took out his keys, surprised at the number of unfamiliar, old-fashioned types. Shrugged at the way things accumulate, at how fragile recollection can be. Recognized his thin, flat apartment key, put it in the lock and opened the door.
"Who's there?"
There was someone in the apartment, a man familiar in voice and silhouette but with a strange, hunched posture, as if he had taken a tremendous blow and had not yet been able to straighten up. "Dad?"
"Is that you, Edward?"
"Dad, what are you doing here?" He stepped forward and his father rushed to fold him in a hard embrace that refocused all Edward's scattered emotions. He was home, and his father had gotten old in the few months of his Absence. Edward felt like crying with grief and guilt. 
His father clapped him awkwardly on the back. "You're here."
"Yes."
"Where have you been?" Stepping back now. "Your mother has been frantic. We almost gave up hope. Where were you?"
Edward looked around the room, took a step so that he could look into the kitchen and the bedroom _ all as usual. "I was Absent," he said. His voice sounded vague even to him. He remembered trying to shake information out of the man he found in the marsh.
"We know that," his father said, anxiety making him abrupt. "Of course, we know that. But where have you been?" 

Edward shook his head. There were a thousand images, ten-thousand, but like the fragments of a dream they were dissolving. "I don't know."
"You can't think what it's done to your mother. You must know."
"Where's Mom?" Edward asked, as if the oddity of his father in residence had struck him again. "Is she all right?"
"What do you think? You go away without a word for half a year and your mother's fine? I leave her at home when I come here; it upsets her so much. And for you just to walk in here like this without warning."
"Coming and going _ you don't know when it will happen. All I know is that I went after Kara." He saw his dad frown. He had never really liked Kara, finding her moody and shy. "I found her," Edward said,  confident of that, "and it was very cold and dry, but I could sometimes still hear the wind around the dike and in the reeds." He suddenly felt dizzy and sat down heavily in one of the chairs. 
"Are you all right? Have you been hurt?"
Edward didn't think so, though it was possible. He retained a sensation of flying or jumping with some tremendous sound ringing in his ears. Then he was on the damp ground below the dike with the marsh sleeping behind him. "It's such a shock to be in one place and then in another. "I came back," he said. "I came back for you and Mom."
He rolled up his pant legs, noticed the bruises but couldn't answer his dad's questions. "It was all gone in a minute, everything I'd seen and done and been. Gone."
His father went into the kitchen and brought him some water. "But what are you doing here?" Edward asked after a minute.
"What do you think? Protecting your apartment. Anything vacant for two, three months they're starting to reassign. I'm here in residence for you. Neighbors have been good," his dad added. "They could have told the Safetymen."
"But I'm a Marsh-Keeper. In fact, I've got to get going. I'm due for punch-in. I came home to get my uniform, my badge."
His father shook his head sadly. "No rush, Edward. You would be better to rest, eat something, get your feet back on dry ground, and_"
Edward interrupted, "I need to be on the marsh, in the boat. I won't feel I'm home until I'm on the water."
"_and see your mother."
"We can stop on the way _ or you can prepare her _ and I'll come by later. I gave you a shock _ I'm so sorry. But maybe it will be easier for her if she knows I'm back and at work and all right. You can see I'm all right, can't you?"
His father had been standing near the window and now he looked out. He started studying the top of the dike, the distant grass and water as if he had never seen them before. "You were always fond of the marsh," he remarked. "The first generation without the long memory and regrets." He gave Edward a sad smile. "Yet you leave, go Absent, as if we had bequeathed you an irresistible sorrow."
"I went for Kara," Edward said stubbornly. "That was all."
"Kara never was easy with this place."
"No, I'm afraid not." Edward found himself reluctant to talk about Kara.
"Your job," said his dad and stopped.
"It wasn't my job," Edward said, but now he suspected it might have been. Marsh-Keepers, Our First Line of Defense, had to live near the water. "At least, she never said."
"A kindly girl," his father said. "Though I never thought she suited you."
Edward hauled himself out of the chair, weary in spite of his eagerness. "I'll just change and we can stop by and see Mom on the way. If you think it won't be too much of a shock."
"You better let me prepare her," his dad said, "But Edward, you can't go to the marsh. Not today."
"Why not?"
"You were gone so long _" and he stopped, looking more hunched and damaged than ever. His hair was very white, too, and his eyes were nervous. He'd always been so good in bad times; in any crisis, Edward realized, he had tried to model himself on his father.
"The more reason not to be past time," he said, but now in a constriction in his chest he sensed what his father was trying to tell him. "What is it?" 
"They've replaced you."
"What do you mean? No one knows the marsh better. No one. And my record _ my record is good." 
 The Chief Warden admitted that. He was very sorry, Edward. Very. 'One of the best men he'd ever had'. Your mother pleaded with him." His dad compressed his thin lips at the memory and straightened his back so that for a moment he was again the man Edward remembered.
"But I came back. I'm back now." It was difficult for Edward to realize that life had gone on while he was Absent; to his mind the CC had stopped and become Ancient Hartford and should now be restarting precisely where it was when he left.
"You have been replaced. There are not ever too many openings _ as you know."
Edward sat back down in the chair and put his face in his hands. After a minute, his dad touched is shoulder. "There'll be other jobs," he said. "You'll need some time."
Edward straightened up, half angry. There was a pattern, he knew, a way Returns were supposed to act, confused, peculiar, between mud and water as the saying went. Not him. He'd see Mom and then right to the Warden. Right to the office. He'd see the SafetyMen if necessary _ Harris would be in a little later. He'd talk to him; tell him he was right _ one didn't know; there was no big knowledge; everything one learned was necessarily left behind. An easy interview and then a boat. He stood up and, for a moment, he felt water beneath the soles of his feet, right through the floor and the ground and the thin bottom of his canoe. 
"I'm going to change," he said. Though his father looked sorrowful, Edward dressed in his full Marsh-Keeper's kit. His only concession was to slip the badge into his pocket instead of wearing it around his neck. 
Downstairs into the morning, the sun lying in hot bars across the pavement like scattered papers. There was a memory for Harris, he thought bitterly: There was a lot of waste in the streets. Where, where? He didn't know. 
"Wait here," said his dad when they reached the familiar pinkish apartment building. He went in alone; Edward waited in the street in the shadow of the pylons, trying to get his mind around dismissal, his possible exile to dry land, his dad's precipitous aging, his mom's need to be forewarned. The woman who sold breads from under the north corner of the building waved to him, and he was about to go over to say hello when he heard a cry from above and stepped out into the light. His mother was at the forth floor window, calling his name.  Something in her voice made his heart jump.
"I'll be there! I'll be right up! Don't come down!"
Under the pylons, up the stair, past the mail boxes of the little lobby, up another stair; he was out of shape with the _ what were they? _ the non-stairs, the Otis, whatever. Another flight, his feet ringing on the treads. A door opening. "Edward! Edward!" 
He had only an instant to see that she was not hunched like his father, but older, old, diminished just the same, her hair streaked with white, then she flung her arms around him. "You're back, you're back. You're safe."
"Yes, yes. And Mom, are you all right?"
"All right now. Let me look at you. Oh, Edward, you have your uniform on. Didn't Dad tell you?" Her face, which had been radiant, clouded.
"I'm going to see the Warden and get this straightened out. There may be something."
"Let's not talk in the hall," his dad said.
"Oh, there may be," said his Mom, "though we did try, didn't we?"
His father nodded.
She repeated this several times, strung up with nerves, Edward saw. "But you're home! Everything else is secondary. Everything. Sit, sit. I'll make you a breakfast."
"I want to get to the marsh as soon as possible," Edward said, but this was pro forma. He understood that he would have to eat, even though he felt queasy with conflicting emotions. His dad gave him a warning glance, and Edward added, "Just something quick and light. I'm not really adjusted yet."
His mother rushed into the kitchen and found some cold rice and vegetables. "When did you get back?" 
Edward leaned against the doorframe. "Just before dawn. I was in the marsh."
"The marsh!" Her face went white. "All that water! Oh, Edward, you might have drowned."
"No chance of that," he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. "You know how I can swim. But I was right at the dike."
"Water is merciful," she said, but it was a moment before she moved away from him to begin chopping cabbage and squash at top speed, her cleaver a blur. Into the pan they went, sizzling with the heat. A hot pepper followed. The smell brought back the breakfasts of his childhood and Edward felt tears in his eyes. 
"It's all right," said his mother. She stopped her frantic preparations and laid a strong, stubby hand on his arm _ later she would be anxious and demanding and puzzled _ but for the moment they were in harmony. "Water is merciful."

Edward tried to keep that thought in mind as he arrived at the Marsh Station, his shirt sticking to his back in a damp heat that he found almost oppressive. How curious that, while his conscious mind had forgotten Ancient Hartford, his body, adapted to its conditions, should remember. He descended the steps and crossed the stretch of waste ground at the base of the dike. The Marsh Station looked the same: the half empty rack of canoes, the berths for the solars at the little dock, the blocky marsh hut. The breeze was up, sweeping the reeds and grasses, and for a moment he wondered how anything else had ever seemed real to him. Then he stepped inside, waved to Irsak the clerk, who was agog and full of questions before he could be persuaded to announce Edward's return to Jimb. The Station Chief nodded awkwardly, muttered a greeting, and took him immediately to the Head Warden.
"You're in close to time," said the Head Warden, a tall rawboned man with stiff black hair, a beaky nose, and heavy brows, who rose from behind his desk to shake Edward's hand. "When did you get back? Have you gone home? Seen your parents _" 
The Head Warden had always liked Edward, who was competent and honest and more than usually conscientious, and it pained him to see the young Marsh-Keeper appear so hopefully in his full kit. Hadn't he spoken to his parents? Hadn't he gotten the word? Although his job required hiring _ and when need be _ firing workers, the Head Warden was a sensitive man who disliked dealing with conflict and bad news. He'd found it hard enough to tell Edward's parents, and now it looked as if he must go through the whole process again. He'd heard Edward had gone Absent after a woman. A romantic then, not too surprising, seeing how he loved the marsh, water, the female element, but, still, what had he been thinking! 
"The reason I'm a little late. My mother insisted on breakfast." Edward gave a rueful smile.
The Head Warden frowned slightly. "And didn't they tell you _"
"About my job?" He hoped for something else, but saw the Warden's expression. "Yes, they did." He reluctantly drew his badge from his pocket and laid it on the desk. "But I thought maybe something else might have opened up. I feel such a need to be on the water," he added with a touch of desperation. "After everything."
The Warden shook his head. "Nothing at the moment. I could keep you on the fill-in list and have you in maybe once a week to help Irsak in the office. Not what you want and a waste of your abilities," he added, holding up his hand, "but it's the best I can do. It's not enough to live on, I know, but I held your position for three months. And you know we are understaffed. I couldn't do more, Edward, though I regretted."
Edward nodded.
"If anything opens up. I will call you first."
They spoke for a few minutes more, then Edward said good-bye. He was at the door before he said, "I don't suppose I could borrow a canoe. Just for an hour or so?"
"The regulations," the Head Warden said regretfully. Edward nodded and closed the door behind him. Outside in the warm morning sun, he walked to the dock, almost mesmerized by the dark rippling blue water. It took all his self control not to  lift down a canoe and paddle straight into the marsh. He was expected, obligated, really, to go straight to the Safetypoint, but he couldn't bear the thought of being inside, of being questioned. He went toward the dike, but instead of climbing the stairs he skirted the edge of the marsh. It had been a day like this, with just the first signs of autumn when Kara had disappeared, when he'd sat up on the Terrace CafŽ too anxious to visit her. It seemed to him that he had failed in two different ways, being too timid first and then, with his ill-fated Absence, too bold.
He kicked a stone along the track, sent another one into the shallow water with a resounding splash, and, so distracted, did not hear the footsteps behind him. "Edward!"
Jonas was waving to him from near the steps. "Well, this is my lucky day." He hustled up to Edward and clapped him on the shoulder. "You've come back to save me again."
Edward was irked by Jonas' insouciance and yet, as so often, he was unable to be really angry when faced with his colleague's unquenchable brio and good nature. "You seem safe on dry land today."
"But late, my man, very late. The sun is high and I am still on the dike, so to speak."
Edward shrugged. Jonas' habitual tardiness seemed a minor, minor problem.
"If you'll just bring a canoe around, I can be off. I'll punch in later when I have all my data and some Contra and some excellent excuse."
"I can't take a canoe. I'm not working here any more. Don't you know I've been replaced?"
Jonas scowled and bit his lip. "They can't fit you back in?"
"Not now and I don't know when."
"I'm sorry."
"I want so much to be on the water," Edward said. "I won't feel I'm really back until I'm in the marsh." 
"Leave that to Father Jonas. Meet me along the Little Siskon." Without another word, Jonas trotted back toward the Marsh Station.
Edward continued along the dike, wading across various little pools and rivulets until he reached the Little Siskon, one of the many streams that drained from the marsh to the river. It was narrow but deep enough for a canoe or the smaller solar, and Edward hadn't been waiting more than a quarter of an hour before Jonas swung in close enough for him to step into the canoe. He picked up the extra paddle and dug into the water. Instantly the world grew brighter, every reed, every blade of grass, every marsh flower and every croaking heron, every butterfly and grasshopper, every small darting fish, every cloud overhead, every reflection in the dark water took on such sharpness that Edward felt renewed, as if he had been lost in fog or submerged in some disturbing dream.
They paddled swiftly up the little rivulet, then turned into one of the broader waters so Jonas could check his gauges. Edward looked back  at the dike and the CC looming behind them and the towering clouds, so much more visible in the familiar watery landscape than they had been with trees everywhere. 
"There were so many trees," he said to Jonas. "All the old species."
Jonas looked at him dryly. "They'll be thrilled to know that. The SafetyMen."
"I guess."
"And do you remember anything else? Anything to enhance our knowledge or make a buck?"
"I remember," Edward said, and then, for a fleeting instant, he saw Kara's white face, sad, imploring, angry at a window of a dark house, and though that was all a dream and an illusion, though it had cost him and his so much, he put his face in his hands and wept.
				





















Seventeen
	
	Edward yelled from the bow and Alek, mate, engineer, fifty-percent of the runner's crew, threw on the engine. It was a battery job, tetchy and perpetually in need of charging, reserved for only the direst emergencies and for the tricky work of cutting across the tidal flow and docking. "Ease it, ease it!" 
Alek was prone to impatience and tempted by speed. He had a gift for engines and mechanical improvisation of all kinds, but he lacked the feel for ships and water that came so naturally to Edward.
	"Steady. Kill the engine!"
	Fat Goose's bulging side slapped against the wooden pier. Edward threw down the mooring lines and waved to Elephant Symms, who was lumbering from his hut on the dock. Like his namesake, the Elephant was heavy and much wrinkled. His flat feet made the dock vibrate as he stamped out of the hut and came along side to check the cargo: salvaged wood today, black with age and sodden through, a good load, all antique species, sound and straight. He heaved himself onboard with Alek's assistance and checked the cargo.
	"What's this?"
	"Oak. And some fir and a little maple. Good stuff. Way pre-Rising."
	 
	The Elephant cleared his throat in what Edward now knew was a sign of approval. Symms rubbed his red, bulbous nose and scratched at his scraggly white whiskers. He had been reluctant to hire Edward, having a deep suspicion of Authority even in so tenuous a form as the person of a former Marsh-Keeper. But when Alek, who was his son-in-law, ran the pride of his fleet into some pilings downriver, the Elephant decided to trust Jonah's recommendation. Edward was employed, on sufferance, true, but at least until the next storm season. His expertise with wood had been a bonus, and now the Elephant not only had him inspect every shipment, but kept him running mostly lumber on the Goose.
	"Unload it, boys. We'll catch the turning of the tide."
	Behind his back, Alek rolled his eyes. He had no intention of getting the runner empty in time to catch the return tide, and while Edward began getting the cargo ready for the crane, he found some little adjustment was needed in the engine. 
The Elephant blew the whistle he kept around his neck and three stevedores came onto the dock and turned the capstan to  adjust the crane. The Elephant directed this operation with a good deal of animation. When all was in position, they started the motor, and with a grumble and a whine, the big arm descended toward the deck. All the loading cranes drew their power from the Electric, and anyone on the system knew very well when the day's cargoes began unloading by the sudden drop in juice. 
One by one, bundles of boards and logs soared overhead, to be deposited in the riverside warehouse or, if they were already sold, hoisted over the dike to the rail depot. These, sodden as they were, would have to be dried, laid out on racks, riverside first, then moved to warmer and drier accommodations that The Elephant rented below the Dancing Otter. Edward had already labeled each bundle with the species type and grade, but The Elephant, distrustful and ever cautious, went over nearly each board with him, so that despite his expressed desire, they missed the tide. 
Edward would as soon have been coasting back down river but instead wound up lifting logs onto the drying racks, heavy, tedious work not made any more palatable by The Elephant's cheerful cries of,  "Early day today, boys!" which meant short wages. Still, he was on the water, there was that, Edward reminded himself. Gulls screaming overhead, light reflecting off the river, the smell of the sea tide, the marshland on both banks, the high silhouette of the dikes; he was home as much as he could say he was home, despite the suspicion that surrounded him and questions from the SafetyMen and the WaterPriests. Besides, the work suited him. He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflector as he left the drying shed. He'd lost the weight he'd put on in Ancient Hartford; his face was lean and, thanks to his work loading and unloading salvage, he was more muscular than he'd ever been as a MarshKeeper. There was something different in his expression, too, something he glimpsed in the evening when he was shaving after work, a hardness in his eyes, as if he'd acquired the resentful caution which he had always associated with Resurrectors and river rats of every persuasion _ he was one of them now. I'm a different person, Edward thought. I look different, I am different. Why do I still miss Kara  so much? 
He nodded to Alek, who was hustling off home to The Elephant's daughter, said, despite her parentage, to be a considerable beauty. He set the morning time with The Elephant _ five, no later, to catch the turn of the morning tide _ and promised to stop by Alek's apartment to rouse him. Edward thought that, early as he was, he should visit his parents, but his mother would insist on giving him dinner and the longer the visit the more chance that all their unspoken fears and angers would emerge. It wounded him to think how his parents had suffered in his Absence, yet although he was often angry at Kara, himself, he couldn't bear to hear anything said against her. Much as he loved them, the visits were awkward, especially now that he was working for the less than respectable Elephant Symms. Halfway to the Raised Road and his parents' apartment, Edward impulsively turned north toward Jessie Ashansa's place. 
He had the sense that if anyone could understand his situation, she might. When he saw bunches of frisŽ, her favorite lettuce, at the nearby vegetable stand he took it as an omen and bought a bunch. A few minutes later, he knocked at her door, holding the leafy green head like a bouquet of flowers.
The door was opened by a sturdy young woman with a halo of black curly hair, a wide mouth and dark eyes. He recognized Diorina Ashansa from the Komunicator photos when she went Absent and from another, more subtle and mysterious sense of familiarity that defied explanation. 
"Is Jessie in? I'm Edward Nempf. I've been away and haven't been able to stop by for some time."
"My grandmother has joined the waters." Her voice was flat, whether with grief or indifference, Edward could not tell.
"When? When did it happen?" He had the awful feeling that it might have happened because he became Absent, because she hadn't found anyone else to help her. Edward thought that he should have told his father and enlisted his aid for the old lady. But then his folks would have suspected his plans and realized his obsession with finding Kara.
"Just two weeks ago."
"I'm so sorry. And so very sorry not to have seen her again. But you were with her?"
"Not that it's your business, but yes."
"I'm glad. You'd been gone, too," Edward said quickly. 
"I returned in time." She stood waiting in the doorway, stolid and wary. Something in her expression was familiar _ he had seen it when he passed reflectors.
"I always found her very sympathetic," Edward said, impelled to continue the conversation. "She was so smart, such a pleasure to talk to."
"She was at her best with strangers and acquaintances," said Diorina.
Edward remembered the old lady's remarks about her troublesome grandchild and felt acutely uncomfortable. He realized he was holding the frisŽ and extended the bunch to her. "Her favorite. I used to shop for her sometimes. Please."
He thought for a moment that she would refuse, then she reached for the lettuce and shut the door, but not before Edward saw the tears in her eyes.

Edward's days off were irregular, more a matter of weather and tide than of any fixed schedule. This made it hard to see his old friends, with whom, in any case, he found himself subtly estranged. Through no fault of his own, he was marked as different and his time in Ancient Hartford seemed to have unsettled most of his CC assumptions. A knowledge that the follies of the past had compounded the disaster of the Risings made him suspect all official pronouncements, whether the composite ( and easily manipulated) reports of the overall water levels or the strictures of the WaterPriests, who seemed to him more active and more insidious than ever. 
Once in a while, he filled in at the Marsh Station, but his work for Symms made him suspect with the Warden and seeing the other Marsh-Keepers busy at work was painful to Edward. Sometimes he walked below the dike, enjoying the marsh from the track, and occasionally he was able to hitch a ride on a solar or a canoe. Other times when he was free during the day, he visited the Museum of Lost Technologies, the big arched hall with the dusty exhibits and faded banners on Quinnak and Cowles. Almost always there were school groups, noisy files of children on educational outings. Today, he thought it was eights and nines, but he lacked Kara's grasp of children's ages and her knowledge of their distinctively colored caps and smocks. Slates in hand, this group was trailing along after a bossy young woman who kept a sharp eye out for clowns and stragglers. 
Edward stood well to the back of the large central hall while the teacher and her young charges clustered around the huge intact diesel truck and the electric locomotive. When they moved on to the Costume Hall and the Historic Images Gallery, Edward walked up to the truck. It was dark green and well preserved except for the crumbling edges of the giant tires. Edward touched the smooth metal side. He could not have said why he came so often. Although he had visited occasionally as a school boy, he had never showed much interest afterwards. Now he longed to open the truck door and climb into the cab. It was called a cab, he knew that. He touched the tires, too, but remembered nothing else. 
There were some other motors including a black Lexus, quite badly damaged but so valuable it was on display, nonetheless. Edward had a great desire to sit inside that, too, but one door was smashed and the other had been sealed shut _ probably to prevent curious school children from injuring their fingers or damaging the seats. 
He heard rapid small footsteps and high childish voices at the entrance _ another class arriving _ and moved on to the Gallery. The MuseumKeepers rotated the pictures to protect them from sunlight and to keep the exhibits fresh. Here was the ancient Civil War Memorial arch with a passing parade, and some street scenes from different eras, distinguishable by the clothing, shop fronts, and marquees. Today they had out a photo labeled, Old Spanish Immigrant Workers, which Edward studied intently. He wondered what it would mean if he should glimpse Hector or Maria or Jesœs. Or himself? Had he ever been photographed on the street? It wasn't impossible.
A picture of the skyline with a fish shaped building that overlooked the river made Edward shiver with a momentary sensation of height, of looking down, of being high, high up in a glass box. And here was another of Bushnell Park with its fountain and the golden dome of the capitol in the background and the white buds of flowering trees _ the park where one had picnics but which one avoided at night. He knew that. Some of the pictures were so old they had been repainted, painstakingly copied in inks on paper and others had yellowed or browned, losing much of their detail, so that they looked, at a glance, not like a mechanical reproduction but an authentic memory.
He looked again at the picture of the workers. Third on left. Thin face, mustache, high cheekbones, a certain proud confidence: could be Hector. Could be. For just an instant, Edward saw his friend's face again in a sour street light, heard footsteps and the metallic vibration of a mesh fence, and shook his head. He came here to be reminded, and yet he knew it would be terrible if Ancient Hartford should somehow have the power to break through present reality. The pictures were a danger as well as an attraction, and hearing the bird-like voices of the children approaching, Edward returned to the now empty main gallery. When he walked around the locomotive toward the display of two wheeled motors, he noticed another visitor, a woman with an untidy mane of black hair who was looking at the motorized bikes. He thought he knew who it was and approached. She didn't acknowledge him at first, then she said, "Riptide with a four stroke, air-cooled motor. Gets up to 80 miles per gallon and has a top speed of 40 miles per hour."
Edward's stomach gave a lurch. He had a vivid memory of riding on one of these devices, of streams of motors passing him on either side. 
Diorina Ashansa turned and looked at him. "Do you come here to remember?" she asked. 
"I don't know. To remember is frightening but not to remember is terrible."
To his surprise, she smiled and her solemn face lightened. "I didn't trust you the other day when you came. Though Grandmother had said you were very kind."
"A hazard of our condition, I think. I've only met one other Return, but he was newly back and no help at all."
She nodded and reached out to touch the handlebars of the Riptide, then asked, "Why did you go Absent?" 
"I went after Kara, my companion." He wished he could have said, my committed. "I was happy enough here, otherwise. I'd been a MarshKeeper." He could not keep the regret from his voice.
"You lost your job? Me, too. But I think I have other prospects. I must have learned some new skills, because I just passed the Electric exam without trouble." She gave the scooter a last regretful pat before  starting toward the exit. Edward accompanied her out to the street. 
"And why did you go?" he asked. It seemed natural between them to ask such normally taboo questions.
"I needed to get away. From various things _ and people. Even Grandmother, though everything good as you observed, could be difficult with family. She'd hoped I'd take on her archival work."
"She was still working?"
"Virtually to the end. I used to borrow material from here for her. They didn't have that much, but whatever they had, she wanted. She wanted me to transfer to the Highlands, to one of the Recovered Institutes, but I have no head for theory. All my brains are in my hands." 
 Edward had a fleeting image of a woman working with tools and then a sensation of fear and speed. "You called yourself Dora," he blurted out, "and you gave me a ride from _" But place and time were gone.
"So we did meet then! We did! Just the way you looked at that old Riptide scooter made me think we had." She turned and stared at him for so long that they began to be jostled by the other pedestrians in the crowded streets, but nothing more came to either one of them. "And maybe we'll meet again," she said, then she turned and walked away. Edward watched her meld into the crowd and disappear behind a pair of Carters with an overloaded trolley.
Because of his irregular hours, Edward could plan nothing, but to his surprise, he saw Diorina the very next week. He'd been on his way to the Museum, drawn as irresistibly, it seemed, as he had once been drawn to the marsh, when she came down the steps. And then, three nights later he saw her at Batwing, where they danced and had a coffee together and joked about Mr. Jonah. So it was, without any conscious planning or design, that she became a part of the new landscape for him. She shopped at the vegetable stall where he had bought things for her grandmother and which his employment on the river made convenient. Fairly soon the vegetable lady with the dyed hair would call out to him, "Diorina's just in the next block," or "Would you let Diorina know I have that  bok choy she wanted?" Or else it would be the fish merchant with a message to pass on or the information that, "You've just missed her," for, since her Return, Diorina had become outgoing and cheerful. "Ill, she was; she was that ill!" confided the rice seller, her sun-wrinkled face beaming. "And now_ like sunshine!" The woman winked as if to hint this transformation was all Edward's doing.
He smiled and nodded, with the mental reservation that he was in love with Kara Wistley. He dreamed of her sometimes, or at least he thought he did, for though he retained not a single image, he often waked in the morning filled with melancholy longing. And curiously, he saw her about town, a will-o-the-wisp of red hair, dappled face, pale arms, or heard, in the sea wind, an echo of her pretty voice. He twice ran madly along Twain shouting her name and nearly fell over the side of Fat Goose, when he was momentarily beyond doubt that she was calling from one of the new islands. After a time, he realized these were tricks of memory and imagination, and he came to wonder how much of the Kara he had loved had been his own creation. Back in the old days, he had not realized that she wanted an entirely different life than he did, and so it was not too hard to understand why he still occasionally believed he saw her or why he wondered sometimes if it had been Kara's very elusiveness that had enchanted him, that kept him, even now, in thrall. 
His friendship with Diorina was quite different. Pretty but solidly down to earth, cynical and practical, she understood when he felt all at sea, and, more important, she was someone who also had little grains of memory that irritated her mind like sand in an oyster. Who knew what pearls_ if ever_ those would produce? They were drawn together by their shared and mysterious experiences, so it seemed natural to talk quietly in front of the evocative pictures of the Historical Images Gallery or to study the motors which still haunted their dreams or to travel along the edge of the marsh in a canoe that Edward, now in high favor with the Elephant, had managed to borrow, and to think, sometimes aloud, of where this or that might have been or how things had been done in Ancient Hartford. He felt easier with her than with his old friends and even with his parents, who distrusted his assurances that he was all right, that he was back for good, that his new career as a Resurrector was strictly temporary, that Diorina, infinitely suspect as a Return, was strictly a friend.
A particular friend, true, but a friend. A friend in need. They were both haunted by fleeting and disturbing dreams about which they sometimes compared notes. This was how they recalled the Mall where she had worked and he'd been frightened. "I know where it is," Edward said one day.
Her face took on the peculiarly intent look associated with discovery and recovery. "I want to go there." 
"Is that wise? It's a ruin. I'm just guessing, but I think that's why I panicked the day I was in the Mall."
"I want to know if it was real," she said, her voice low and passionate, so that Edward sensed she had more of her grandmother's love for knowledge than she pretended. He promised to guide her, but it was several weeks and the start of spring with the redwings and grackles calling and frogs churning ponds in mad amphibian sex, before the tides that ruled his work cooperated with her day off. Edward borrowed the canoe, and they pushed away from the Elephant's loading dock to paddle against the tide as far as Hog Creek and the west quadrant. Within an hour, they were scanning rivulets and mudflats _ always shifting and changing _ for the little waterway Edward remembered. They made two false starts and then, as Diorina was beginning to get discouraged, as well as sore from the unfamiliar exercise, he spotted what he was sure was the right stream. They dug their paddles in and soon saw the stretch of raised ground with the low cement wall where he had found Jonas. 
"I came here the day before I went Absent," Edward remarked.
"But not from here?" Her momentary anxiety told Edward that she was content in the present and hoped he was too.
"No, no. Raised Road the next morning."
They tied the canoe to one of the tough scraggly willows and stepped onto the boggy shore.
"You think this is it?" Diorina looked doubtfully at the crumbling cement. 
"There's more; the lower floors are still partially intact. The foundation goes down quite far_ totally unsafe." 
She started around the building without answering. Only when they were well out of sight of the canoe and the waterway did she concede the structure was big enough. Edward pointed out the fallen girders and what looked like the collapse of some huge sky window, but Diorina was not convinced until they came to a higher bit of ground, thinly vegetated and suspiciously flat. She knelt down and began scraping away the dirt and grasses to reveal a crumbled black lump below. "Asphalt," she said.
"A parking lot." She sat back on her heels and looked at the ruin, squinting against the sun as if to envision the building in Ancient Hartford. "It was all real then." 
	"We knew that," he said. "We knew there was an Ancient Hartford. But how much did we make up?"
	"I made up a different life," she said. "One I thought I wanted. One without ties or grandmother or any boundaries."
	Edward nodded. "I thought I wanted to live with Kara Wistley."
There was a world of implication in those words, but though she stood up and took his hand, all she said was, "Let's get out of here." 


 

			      




Eighteen

Edward sat out on the Bulwark CafŽ's long stone terrace atop the dike. Behind him, the marsh glowed russet under a bank of blue gray clouds, but all his attention was focused on the crowded streets and close packed apartment houses to the east. He was waiting for Diorina and marking, with a cup of coffee and a handful of chocolates, the anniversary of Kara's Absence. It had been two years, two years almost to the day, since he had loitered the afternoon away, worrying about her health. So though he could have met Diorina in any number of more convenient places, somehow the Bulwark was the only choice for what he wanted to say, for what he was going to ask her.
Two years! Two years during which Ancient Hartford had come to seem no more than a dream, a wave lasting but a moment, as the Water Priests said. Would that was all they said! He'd been hearing their drums all afternoon, and now he glimpsed one of their black robed processions, sweeping arrogantly along the Dike Road _ expecting Carters and Fishers and ordinary folk with real business to clear out of the way. They'd be going to the Tower Point just below the Komunikator mast, set to drum up a storm and awaken the neighborhood with flares. This was something new, this veneration for a nub of ruin long neglected, and Edward had the uneasy suspicion that he might be the cause, for during one of his interminable interviews with the SafetyMen, he had mentioned a tower.
For him it had been a navigation aid, a distinctive, Very Old Style landmark in the midst of the glass towers. He'd probably said that under the influence of the mushrooms the SafetyMen had considerately plied him with. He'd come to shouting, To steer by, to steer by.  Well, if that had gotten back to the WaterPriests, they'd have swum to it for sure, and it seemed they had, though he was certain, and Diorina was, too, that the tower had been purely for business. Now it was the latest Super thing, a popular rally point for the cult and an amusement for the citizenry, who enjoyed the music and the ever-increasing pageantry. On balance, it was a blessing that one remembered so little when so slight a memory could cause such mischief. 
He had been deaved for weeks by the local WaterPriest, who had haunted him with an almost uncanny ability. Over and over again, Edward said he remembered nothing, but the fellow, bald and moon faced with intent dark eyes, insinuated otherwise. Surely there were more towers? Surely? Edward had shrugged. It was impossible to explain that memories of Ancient Hartford did not follow any conventional pattern. They emerged in dreams or in confrontation with an object, often a trivial one. Taken to the ruin, he had felt nothing more than that this truncated heap, preserved out of some mistaken civic pride as a combination warehouse and apartment, might better have been replaced with something up to StormCode.
The WaterPriest had only smiled, and perhaps they were happier without too much definite knowledge. That the site was Ancient, that it was connected somehow with the oh, so mysterious Returns gave it power enough. The Tower ruin had survived the Great Rising; it was full of powerful Super, though Edward felt, and more than once said, that the time and energy devoted to its veneration might have been turned to more useful ends. It was odd, he thought, that he, who was ScienceSide _ now more defiantly than ever_ had had a genuine Super experience, while the WaterPriests, safe in conventional reality, yearned for those doors to elsewhere that remained closed to them. Diorina said it was the perversity of human nature, and he had to agree. 
In any case, neither Super nor Science had explained their experience and neither seemed capable of recovering whatever it was they had known. Perhaps Jessie Asansha, with her ancient theories of strings and wormholes and quantum uncertainties could have helped them, but it would take a lot of work with her archive to understand how far she'd gotten or whether her diagnosis of Ancient Hartford had been only a lucky guess. Perhaps lucky guesses were more vital than either ScienceSide or Super  acknowledged, for after they had located the Mall to their satisfaction, neither Edward nor Diorina ever found anything else. The Ancient City's geography was lost for good, even if they still had moments when they felt that they were on the verge of recognition. The man on Wynd's boat, for example. That had been a shock. 
It happened because the Elephant, long associated with "Old Alpon,"  had sent Edward over to Wynd's barge with a package and a receipt for some lumber. Still daylight this time, and the guard dog running along the barge deck barked without anger, before a big dark man, silhouetted against the light, jogged not just ordinary, but Ancient Hartford, memory. 
"For Alpon Wynd from Elephant Symms," Edward shouted. He was standing on the string of pontoons that led out from the shore. 
The man swung down the ladder and set the pontoons swaying. "Can't see the boss. He's been taken ill. I'll deal with whatever." He had Old Stock features of the African type, not uncommon but somehow uncommonly familiar, and something more, a weight of presence that tightened Edward's chest. 
"Edward Nempf. I visited Alpon Wynd a couple of years ago."
The man elongated his mouth without showing his teeth. Edward guessed that passed as a smile. "You were looking for someone, someone gone Absent. She ever show up?"
Edward felt a powerful urge to strike the man and, shocked by this impulse, handed over the package before he could do anything foolish. It was only later that he connected the man with Ancient Hartford, with Kara's dark friend, whose name, like so much else, had escaped him. 
"Do you think they all had their counterparts here?" he asked Diorina the next time they met. "Could we see only what we had once seen _ maybe here in the Museum _ and meet only people who exist here?"
He thought she went a little pale at the idea. "I left because of someone _ not just because I wasn't getting on so well with Grandmother."
Edward hadn't known this.  His overwhelming, indeed, nearly his only, memory of Diorina from Ancient Hartford had been her confidence. Her confidence and her motor. She certainly hadn't seemed like a woman on the run. But then, Edward supposed, they had all been subtly different.
"I don't like the idea that he followed me _ or that he was there all the time."
There was an implication in this about Kara that Edward did not want to follow up and yet could not quite ignore. "I have the sense that we created part of everything," he said. "I trusted some people there at first sight. What could that mean? I seem to remember that most of the motors were black or green like the ones in the Museum. And anywhere outside of the CC boundaries was vague, foggy, formless, as if I couldn't quite see _ or imagine _ things that were right in front of me."
For a while, they talked like this, speculating and trying to remember, but then it seemed that, despite all pressures personal and official, even their dreams forgot. The Museum's Historical Images Gallery gradually lost its fascination, and the power of the motors, even the Riptide which Diorina patted every time she passed, dwindled. Edward stopped having glimpses of Kara, and gradually even stopped longing for them. Diorina, having tidied up her grandmother's affairs, began talking about leaving the CC, about making an entirely new start. At first Edward had been only mildly interested in this _ a certain restlessness was typical of Returns, who, having experienced another time frame, seemed uneasy in the CC where everyone knew of their peculiar experience and where, at any moment, a name, a picture, a glimpse of the river could awaken a painful realization of forgetfulness. A low level of anxiety was common to Returns, along with a suppressed irritation with family and friends _ Edward knew all about that. 
But as he got to know Diorina better and began to rely on her companionship, he listened with some dismay when she spoke of the Highlands or of putting in for one of the new island bases. He grew troubled as her plans seemed to advance and hopeful when he saw that they were often contradictory: she would take her Grandmother's papers, which might hold some key to Absence, and try to join one of the Historical Institutes or, on the contrary, employ her manual skills, and what Edward realized was an acute mind, on one of the new islands. Faced with these plans, he always urged more consideration, more time to re-adjust, postponing, which she could see if he could not, certain personal, as well as professional, decisions. But then, with the wonderful news of today, Edward had become suddenly decisive: He would ask her for Commitment and see if she would come north with him.
He looked toward the Rail. She would come from that direction, because she had qualified for a repair job at the Electric Station that served it. He might have met her at one of the little pylon cafŽs along the way or walked right to the Station door. With this thought, Edward wondered if, in some deep place in his mind, he didn't still have reservations, if he had come here not just to remember but for something else indefinable. He left his table and walked to the wall overlooking the marsh. When he had first come back, he visited this spot every day, waiting and hoping to see a woman with red hair and a dappled face standing slightly dazed on the mud flat, only to return disappointed. Today, he saw nothing but a couple of willets going about their business in their grayish speckled suits and a snowy egret industriously probing the brown water near the storm drain _ and felt relief. At this precise moment, he admitted that he did not want Kara to return. Not now. Not soon. He could still not quite bear to say 'not ever', though perhaps that would be best for someone who had never been easy near the water. 
He put his head down on his arms and closed his eyes against the sun. It was hard to recapture the hopes and dreams that had once impelled him: such joys, such sorrows, precious and rare even if highly dependant on his own ideas about Kara and what she'd felt. He had deceived himself, and yet his love for her was a permanent and cherished possession even if it no longer dominated his life. For better or worse, Kara had been his touch of the poet, as her new life in Ancient Hartford _ a much more ambitious and complex project_ was hers. Thinking of Absence in that way, he wondered if even here in the CC there were refugees from other times. Maybe whenever life became intolerable such things happened, or, seeing that his own generation was mostly adapted, maybe great disasters left open mysterious gaps as a sort of psychic residue. It was possible. 
 Edward opened his eyes: sun glitter on the water, a breeze ruffling the marsh. Diorina would soon arrive, and he was about to return to his seat when, unmistakably, he felt a presence behind him.  She had come soft-footed up the steps to surprise him and he was about to turn, when he heard Kara, it was Kara, he would never, ever doubt that, say, "Good-bye, Edward." 
"Don't," she said, but he had already turned his head.
The terrace was empty. He ran to the stair. No one on the steps. And in the crowded street? No _ or maybe yes, for a glimpse of red hair clutched his heart, and then unmistakable, her face, her hand raised for an instant in farewell. But it wasn't Kara at all just a banner or a ribbon fluttering off the back of a cart. He was still scanning the crowds and trying to regulate his heartbeat, when Diorina appeared at the top of the stair, round-faced, smiling, solidly of the here and now. He had asked her once if, like Kara, she had gone Absent to be different. She had and this was the result, this confident, cheerful woman who knew how to dispel the clouds that he seemed to have acquired in his own Absence.
"You look as if you've seen a ghost."
"I did, sort of."
"I saw you waving."
"I've been saying good-bye."
Diorina gave him a look, but she did not ask any questions. She was a person whose understanding did not have to be expressed in words. Grateful, Edward slipped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick hug. She laughed. "Ancient manners," she said.
"But allowed today because I have wonderful news. Well, I hope you'll agree it's wonderful. I've been offered a marsh job." 
"Oh, Edward! I'm so glad for you. No more Elephant!"
"No more Elephant, no more Fat Goose, no more Resurrectors. There is a catch, though, not here. There's a marsh being restored and expanded just north of the Boston CC." He spoke so quickly that he almost stumbled over the words in his anxiety to give her all the information and to sweep away any hesitation she might feel. "I'd be Station Chief. It will be another CC eventually _ pretty primitive right now, but, Diorina, there would be opportunities for you. New turbines, Electric, there may be a Rail. You've wanted to leave, to start again."
 "Well," she said.
"And you could take Jessie's _ your grandmother's_ papers. They say a lot got saved from Ancient Boston. A lot. It wouldn't hurt to study those, to complete your grandmother's work. I could help you. We might even find _ whatever."
"I might." She looked closely at him and waited. 
Edward knew that she was not just thinking of the archive. "Today I said good-bye to all others," he told her. "Here and elsewhere, before and after."
Diorina smiled. "We would be Committed."
Edward took her hand. "From this moment," he said.


  

 
 


 
 

	
	 
	
	
	
	
	
s